The dead goons had all reached down over the stalls, pulling hair from the girls' heads whenever they could grab some strands. The girls were crying and yelling, trying to attract attention from outside the room, but so far all their screams had been doing was agitating their zombie stalkers. The louder their protests, the more the zombies pushed against their frail cubicle walls where they sought refuge. Things were aggravated even further when several zombies dropped to the floor and began crawling upside down into their stall. Their zombie mouths chewed back and forth in the air and their arms grabbed for the girl's legs. Two of the girls began screaming and stomping on the zombies' faces, until one of them crushed a chewer's head, and he stopped moving entirely. "Stomp their heads! I just killed one! I stomped his head until it cracked apart. Now, the bastard is not moving at all. Kill them all!"
One of the killers was under Brenda Lewis' feet. She stomped as hard as she could. On the fifth boot stomp, the drooler's face imploded as though it had literally crawled inside his ugly face. His skull cracked into small fragments from several additional kicks. A cracking sound ensued. Then the zombie stopped moving instantly. "I killed the bastard!" Brenda Lewis cried in relief. She jumped up and down clapping her hands. She was hysterical and shook violently out of fear for her life. Meanwhile, the other droolers were making headway on destroying the very same toilet stall.
"Help us, God! Please!"
"We are going to die! I know we are!"
"I want to be home!"
When the door to the girl's john crashed open and several blood covered jocks entered, they were already wielding well used glistening red baseball bats. The zombies turned away from the trapped girls and stared at the door where the noise had attracted them.
"Come on, chicken shits!" one of the football players yelled. "Come on! Pick on somebody your own mother fucking size, bitches!" He moved forward flailing his bat at their arms and heads. Cracking sounds ran through the room as the zombies' bones gave way to the crushing blows the boys were inflicting upon them. The sound of collapsing skulls ensued soon there after, and the droolers entered a new world of true death in which they were no longer animated but lay still as a midnight school's abandoned parking lot.
"I got them!" Rick Jones yelled. "Any still alive!"
"None here!"
"Are we clear?"
"Clear."
"Clear."
"All right! We got them. You can come out now, girls. The room is cleared. They are frigging dead!"
The cries from the stall were faint. The girls were so frightened from what had happened, it took them a minute just to open the door. Finally, they peeked about the girl's rest room. Finding the room safe, they slowly poured forth from their cramped hide-away and hugged one boy after the other. The guys couldn't avoid the familiar wet tears rolling across the girls' faces.
"Step over the corpses, girls. We're going home."
After they left, Rick Jones raced back in and cracked open the brains of the three dead girls who had been bitten and whose guts had been eaten by the zombies.
"Sorry, fuckers. No new meals for you after you wake up today! It ain't going to happen!"
Nancy was one of them. Ricky had grown up with her. He looked at Nancy Sparn and wondered if he could do this to her. She had been beautiful before the zombies ripped into her and ate her innards. Even with a crushed skull, she wasn't too bad looking, at least considering what had occurred.
"I like your hair, Nancy. Looks good..."
He turned and exited the door, having bashed in her head. He threw up in the hallway, still holding the same wet bat he had used on her in his hands. He couldn't stop crying for her. Tears came in a flood of regrets suddenly released from a dam. He had always admired the girl. In a few minutes, he was calmer and was ready for more combat. Ricky hadn't liked bashing Nancy's skull. Now, he had to finish the rest of them off as well. Tears still trickled down the side of his face. Fuck the tears. He didn't care. These were nice girls. He'd known and admired them all of his life. They were very close friends of his. But Ricky had to do what he had to do. He opened the rest room door again. Staring at him and reaching for his throat were the two dead girls he hadn't yet bashed. They were already resurrected and hunting for him. He screamed and began bashing their skulls. He cried as tears filled his eyes. Nonetheless, he did all of the right things. He crushed their heads in, then stomped them into the floor to make certain they were dead. Then he cried even more for himself and for the girls. How could the world be this terrible all of a sudden. Finally, his sobs stopped. He touched the girl's lifeless bodies. "I'm so sorry," he told them. Then he got up and ran out of the rest room. He had done them a favor. Now they were at peace. They would never endure the horror and pain of an eternal death as a walker and a destroyer of human souls, a death that forced them into enough hunger to hunt, kill, and eat their high school friends.
He wiped the tears from his face, but not before his friends saw them and turned their heads away to give him some space.
"What did you do in there,” his friends asked him.
"You don't want to know," he said in an other worldly and very painful voice.
It was true, because they'd already endured enough pain and horror themselves for one day, and some of them had been forced to kill other friends in the halls who were trying to kill them as well.
In this new world, their lives were permanently changed for the worse. Everything had changed for them in a matter of minutes. No one discussed it.
Sometimes, they figured it was just best to let dead dogs lie.
#
Aiden and his friends reached the boy's gym. Noise and screams crept from its dual doorway. They decided to go inside and check it out. Aiden pushed it open slowly. The running back named Lance Ridley was inside. He was bent over eating from the legs and intestines of a kid named Bentley. Bentley was the water boy for the football team. Bentley was a good kid, always friendly, so much so that many considered he was possibly gay and told him so. It always brought him to tears. Aiden had protected Bentley from that whenever he could. Aiden was completely against bullying at the school or anywhere else.
"I'll not have you doing that," Aiden told Dennis Mack, a budding bully. Dennis was the worst of the lot. "I'll beat the shit out of you anytime I see or hear of you doing this to the kid."
"You wouldn't dare," Dennis Mack said. "I know you wouldn't. They'd kick you out of football, and you know it."
"Think so, do you?"
At that point, Aiden hit Dennis Mack right in the nose. It bled the rest of the day.
"I didn't do that," Aiden said. "Like you just said, 'You wouldn't dare.'"
"Bastard. You had no right to hit me."
"Damn right," Aiden told him. "I'll tell you another thing."
"What's that?"
Aiden pulled Dennis right to his face. He showed his teeth. "I can't stand a chickenshit bully like you. I will darn well hit you harder than you will ever hit a little defenseless kid like Bentley. I can close both of your eyes so tight for you, that you'll need fifteen dollars worth of steak just to put over them for the night."
"Bullshit, you say!"
"I gave you one sample. Now, you are saying you want the real thing! Is that what you want?"
Aiden placed his fist against Dennis Mack's face.
"Your nose looks like shit. Want to try for the eyes next, Mr. Pussy Boy?"
"I reckon not, Aiden. What if I told the Principal what you just did?"
"Sure. Go ahead. I'll tell him why. Then you can leave school for two full weeks. I'll get one day maybe two, and I'll still be the quarterback, bitch boy. You just don't know the way things work here yet. You'll figure it out. Whoever you hit later on, whether in school or off campus somewhere, know that I'm coming for your eyes and making them swell shut all night long for you. So, your days of hitting little kids like Bentley are over for good starting right now."
Dennis Mack looked at the blood on his hands. He didn
't like this, but there was nothing he was going to do about it.
"I'll make you wish you were still born."
"He's a faggot," Mack said.
He was testing the water.
Aiden hit him right above the nose bridge this time. Dennis Mack went down like a ton of bricks. Aiden bent down into Dennis' face.
"Need more?"
"No. I'm okay," he said.
"If you think you need more sensitivity training from my fists, then let's get it on right now."
"I don't want any trouble."
"Good. But if I ever hear you changed your mind, I'll be hunting you down."
That was a year ago. Now, Bentley was dead, and one of Aiden's best friends, Lance Ridley, was chewing him up like hamburger. Bentley's blood soaked face and shirt dripped with Bentley's remains. Lance looked at Aiden. A smile was written across his face. He held up a handful of Bentley's flesh, then placed it in his mouth, chewed, and bent down for another rip at the kid's fresh remains. Aiden's baseball bat found its mark. Lance's brain oozed from his instantly crushed skull. His personal horror was ended, and Aiden could sleep knowing that Lance would not have to spend eternity killing more and more harmless kids like Bentley.
Aiden patted Lance on the back.
"Good-bye, my friend," he said.
He knew what he had to do. Bentley's head assumed a deadly shape as the baseball bat again went down and pummeled deep into his brain. The reddening ooze let Aiden know he had done his last act of friendship the right way. Bentley's horror was over for good.
"I loved you, Bentley, even if others never liked you." He patted Bentley's shoulder. "Welcome to the team, kid. Thanks for everything you did for me and the guys out there." Aiden nodded toward the football field.
How many are dead already?
Aiden wondered how many of his football buddies would survive tonight. Many of them were already spread out inside the gym along with other kids from the school. The dark night might become even worse. Far worse. This could be just a down payment for even more horrible things to come.
He turned around. The other guys with bats looked at him. The zombie kids were bent over eating many of their friends. The crazy thing was that the zombies themselves had been their friends. This infection's craziness had turned them into mindless, hungry monsters. They were the walking dead.
"You know what to do," Aiden said.
The boys swung their bats as hard as they could, smashing skulls of both the zombies and their victims, making sure that the madness would not go forth from this room.
When it was over, Paul Schwimmer stood with his back to everyone. He was trembling. Aiden knew he was crying. There had been a lot of that today. Aiden put his arm around Paul. "I know. It's hard. Most of the other guys are crying, also." Aiden turned Paul toward him. "I'm proud of you," Aiden said. "You know you did the right thing. For you as well as for them. No one can hurt them ever again."
Paul cried even more.
"Now each of them is a little kid again," Aiden said.
They dispatched fifty youthful corpses stacked together inside the showers where they had run to escape their deadly fates. Each corpse was in a varied state of awakening as a zombie. Now, they, too, were little kids once more with nothing to disturb their peacefulness. As Aiden looked back, he saw their blood flowing across the floor from the shower room.
#
The boys cleaned out the girl's gym. The scene was the same. Girls cut open by the sharp teeth and fingernails of their drooler friends were being fed upon by their girlfriends, lovers, and even by a few general strangers who had simply staggered blindly onto the campus that day.
As the football jocks clobbered their heads into the ground, Aiden and Ricky noticed that Billy Edwards had found his sister, Mary Anne, chewing on another girl. He had not hesitated to re-kill her already damaged brain matter with his descending baseball bat. Her brain had shattered like a watermelon which was becoming a very familiar sight. Billy did not even pause. He brought the bat down on the head of the girl that his sister had killed, silencing her forever as well, which was the right thing to do, saving her from the horror of becoming another zombie in the army of resuscitated and very dangerous walking dead.
Aiden and the other batters were clubbing half-naked girls all over the gymnasium. Not one of them were aroused by the sight. This was simply a clean up action. Sex was the farthest thing from their minds. There would be time for love between the sexes for young adults later, but only if their world were cleaned of the infection. The dream of sleeping with a girl who later awakened to kill you was flashing like a You Tube Movie inside their minds as a distinct possibility. It was one thing that they'd never allow to happen after this deadly day of mayhem and terror. Mere survival amid the horror of the infection was the only goal they had.
Love was as far away as forever after. It wasn't even considered. That's how much their idealism had faded in the midst of their first need which was that of survival.
"We need to do another walk through the gym," Aiden said. "Let's get this done. Leave no one alive, guys."
A few clubs made their mark on those that had been forgotten on the first pass. As each club smacked into a skull, the boy doing the batting yelled, "Clear!"
It was visceral and surreal. Aiden would never forget this day. The sight of beautiful girls lying dead, cut open and used as mere food for the walking dead confronted their systems. Fluids oozed across their shirts and onto the floors. Their once beautiful bodies had produced these final ghastly images that would haunt Aiden and all of the others forever.
Inside the showers, the clubbing went on with the yells of "Clear! Clear! Clear!" as each crushed head was verified as completely shattered before the next one was approached and smashed.
"Clear."
"Clear."
"Clear."
#
Aiden took all the high school kids who had not been bitten to the cafeteria next. He had hoped he'd find more of the students alive, locked up in there, and waiting to be rescued. If so, they'd be safe from the biters. On the way, they killed a number of droolers, mostly little kids from the high school, people they grew up with. They stooped over bodies of people they had murdered. They were so busy eating teachers and high school freshmen on the bloodied floors that they just ignored Aiden and the others and continued chewing. It seemed absurd that most of these high school zombies as well as the corpses they were eating had been friends just that morning. The zombie kids were totally familiar with their victims, because they'd gone to school together for years. In only a few hours all of that had changed. Now, the recent past seemed like it had been a dream and that it had never really existed. They were just waking up. Now, everything they had been taught about human goodness was a big fucking lie like all the others in their lives.
"I wish I were never born right now," Aiden said.
"Me, too," Ralph Abrams confessed. "This is just pure bull shit."
"I want my mom," Jennifer Kramer said. "I want to go home right now."
"It's not going to happen," Aiden said, "unless you want to walk there all alone."
"That's crazy! I'd never make it."
"Smart girl, Jennifer. You stick with us. There's power in numbers. Otherwise, there's not a chance of a snowball in Lancaster that you'll still be alive tomorrow morning."
Jennifer's eyes became watery.
"This is sickening," Jennifer said. "It's like a horror movie."
"And we are all seconds," Aiden said. "We're underpaid and unwanted." It was melodramatic, but it was honest.
"That's for sure, Jennie said.
"We only have meaning to ourselves if we can stay healthy and avoid becoming infected," Aiden explained. "We only do that if we stick together. Even so, many of us are going to die tonight. There's nothing we can do about it, but try our best to stay clean. Hopefully, we can all make it. But we have to live smart all of the time from now on. The way we used to be is dead now."
&nb
sp; "The school was not smart," Ralph said. "That's for sure. They should have protected us."
"Well, they didn't know it was coming," Aiden reasoned. "It took them unaware. Not long ago everything was normal. Now, look at it. Normal is half the town dead and many of them are right now resurrecting to hunt us down and kill the rest of us."
"It's crazy," Ralph said.
"Of course, it's crazy. Zombies were always going to be crazier than bat shit if they existed at all. Well, now they do. Of course, they are crazy. That's what they are."
"That's so true," said Bob Ravens. Bob was a football tackle.
Jennifer leaned against Bob. His body was strong, and it should have made her feel safe, but it didn't. Not any more. She'd never feel safe again, not as long as she lived.
"I'm going to be sick," she said.
"Did they bite you? Tell me they didn't bite you," Bob Ravens said.
"I'm not bit," she said. "Here. Check me over. I'm clean."
Bob looked at every exposed inch of her body and then some.
"He's getting himself horny for free," Ralph said. "What a lech, Ravens. I bet you fuck cows at midnight."
"Actually, I fuck cows in the morning when I milk them. My fingers on their udders makes them love me."
"You damn farm boys."
"Luck of the draw," Bob said. "We were just born in the country to become the lucky boys. We got lots more things to do than you town folks ever dreamed of in those dirty little brains of yours."
"How's that?"
"We was nasty even before Internet porno. In fact, we filmed it in the stalls."
"I bet you did."
"They don't say farm boys have more fun for nothing," Bob joked. He grinned. He chuckled under his breath. He loved bullshitting the city kids. They were always total suckers for his fantastic lies.
"He doesn't fuck cows, Ralph. He's just shooting you a big crap load. Don't let him rile you."
"Maybe I like being riled," Ralph said. "Yea. Maybe I love it."
"It's better than what happened in Lancaster today," Aiden said. "I was all ready for the big game this weekend. Now, that's not important. It's not even a part of the horizon anymore."
"Why not?" Ralph asked.
"Because there is no horizon," Aiden said. "Football games are over forever. Killing zombies and staying alive is the only game now. Don't you get it? And we'll never make state this year, because there is no state anymore. Pennsylvania is probably lying dead all around us."