Chương 1: Normal school day with a chance for zombies

Halfway through the Physics mid-term, someone decided to open holes in the fabric of reality. The wall behind poor Mr. Hansen seemed to swirl and wave like the surface of a water bucket that had just been kicked, before turning a featureless black like Mandy's nails after her trying that super-black, super-non-reflective nail polish... or a black hole. With the majority of the class focused on the test and Mr. Hansen having his back to it, for a few seconds I was the only one to notice.

Everyone else got clued in pretty quickly though, because a pale, naked, shambling thing came out of the disc of darkness and bit Mr. Hansen in the back of the neck. He screamed, the whole class looked up, then everyone else was screaming as more shambling figures crawled out of the strange phenomenon, their skin like grey wax, their expressionless faces sporting milky-white eyes and gaping, saliva-dripping mouths. They were zombies, all right?

Everyone who's ever seen typical cheap horror movies could tell what they were, just like everyone who's ever played lots of computer games or watched lots of cartoons, or seen any superhero movies in the past three decades could have told you the black disc was a portal. Alien zombies were invading Destiny, Florida, which meant Hollywood had lied to everyone for decades; New York wasn't the focus of every supernatural weirdness ever.

Mandy slipped and fell on me, limbs and long red hair flailing as she frantically retreated while screaming at the top of her voice, which knocked me out of my stupor and helped the realization settle in; yes, shambling corpses were eating people in class. Running away in terror was perfectly appropriate! Mr.

Hansen underscored that point better than he'd ever had one of our lessons by no longer struggling and just bleeding everywhere and suddenly, I too was shoving desks and other students aside in the mad scramble for the exit. Half the class was caught in the throng of flailing limbs, pushing and pulling as we all tried to flee at the same time only to get stuck.

People screamed louder, more desks and chairs fell over in an almost continuous crash, the press of body against madly shaking body slowing everyone to a crawl as somebody's elbow slammed repeatedly against my ribs. Then the pressure burst and most of us toppled in the corridor just outside the class.

Josh and Malcolm were the first to fall and in everyone's attempts to escape I only realized the two football jocks had been trampled after the throng broke and I found myself groaning on the floor next to Mandy, with a very red-faced Jerry lying on top of both of us, huge nerdy glasses askew.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorr-GAH!" I threw the idiot aside with all the strength and viciousness trained three times a week in cheer leading practice then scrambled to my feet. Left and right doors were already banging open, dozens of curious students coming out to see what all the screaming and running was about, quickly followed by several teachers.

"Miss Wennefer, what's the meaning of this?" a rather irate Mrs. Ferguson demanded as she marched up to our group, black pumps clacking against the floor, neat-freak grey shirt and skirt clashing with all the color and obvious blood as she scowled at everyone running away without even noticing her furious advance.

"This is a school during exams, not a football stadium!" Of course, out of all those still screaming and flailing around the very annoying Math teacher would focus on Mandy and me; everybody knew she had it out for both cheerleaders and jocks.

"Well, you see..." I croaked then had to pause and catch my breath, ribs feeling like they were on fire from all the pounding they'd taken earlier. The very not amused, middle-aged Math teacher scowled down at me... which meant she missed the very naked, very ugly walking corpse dripping fresh blood as it shambled up to her until it grabbed her with both hands - and then it was already too late. Yellowed teeth bit down with inhuman strength before she had the time to utter a surprised "What?"

and then the terror of freshmen everywhere disappeared under two hundred pounds of flabby, dead, hungry flesh. As the walking dead had previously demonstrated, a teacher's violent death was enough to send the rest of us screaming away and with several classes worth of students in the corridors everything turned to chaos in an instant.

I was too out of breath to join everyone else in the mad dash, Mandy was only then getting off the ground and at a single glance we decided neither of us wanted to risk getting trampled by the huge crowd pressing towards the stairs.

"Noo!!!" Jerry screamed as another zombie shambled in his direction, crawling backwards on his elbow and feet to get away from the walking corpse. In a brief bout of what was probably temporary insanity, Mandy and I both dragged the nerdy boy back, pulled him to his feet, then the three of us disappeared deeper into the school as more zombies shambled into the corridor. xxxx xxxx"What the actual fuck?!" Mandy eloquently described our situation as the three of us caught our breath on the school's top floor.

"Fucking zombies? How is that a thing? Why is that a thing?!" The redhead was panting as much as the rest of us, except her face had turned a blotchy, ugly crimson and her hands shook as they failed at catching her red hair in a ponytail for the third time in a row. I was at least twice as terrified as she looked and my ribs still hurt with every breath but at least I wasn't screeching hysterically just yet. Or maybe I was too out of breath to copy her.

"Guys, take a look at this!" Jerry asked, oblivious of our little meltdown as he had his face stuck in a window overlooking the football field and the city beyond.

"Something weird is going on out there."

"Weird? Weird?!" the redhead screeched and started to kick at the nearest target as she finally lost it, which happened to be Jerry himself.

"The walking dead dropped in for a meal in the middle of fucking midterms, you useless nerd! How much weirder can it get?" A hell of a lot, as it turned out. The skyline of Destiny, Florida - not to be confused with Destin, also in Florida - was nothing to write home about. The city had less than two hundred thousand citizens, most of them recent immigrants, and the taller buildings were the local mall and the roller coaster in the old amusement park.

Except this was far from a normal day and the sky had decided to join the weirdness with gusto. Pink, orange and violet lights illuminated the rapidly spreading storm clouds as if by multicolored lightning, sunlight grew dim, and more than one distant explosion blew up holes in buildings. Green explosions shook the ground, caused by swirling emerald green lines flying around at random across the streets until they hit brickwork or parked cars.

Said streets were full of people running for their lives just as much as the students that had just broken out of the school building's front door. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Then another portal tore open in the middle of the football field, spewing out more zombies and cutting off the terrified crowd from the main gate.

"We need to get out of here," I muttered, not realizing I'd spoken out loud until Jerry and Mandy turned around to look at me... at which point I shrugged and owned being Captain Obvious.

"Well, we do. We've all seen the movies; the whole school will become a death trap, if it isn't already."

"This isn't a movie, Maya," Mandy shot back.

"It's... it's..." she swallowed, not knowing how to continue.

"What if it is?" Jerry countered and the two of us stared at the nerdy brunet.

"I mean, we all recognized the zombies, right? Because they acted like zombies!" When neither of us spoke he seemed to gain confidence because he talked faster and louder.

"They shambled like zombies, attacked like zombies. We're safe just now because they couldn't climb stairs - just like zombies."

"We can't act as if this is a stupid horror flick," Mandy shot back angrily, not calling Jerry an idiot but everyone hearing it anyway.

"We just got lucky. One mistake, one slip, and we'll be dead!"

"Well, we can't do nothing either!" the boy argued, his usual timidity absent despite the situation.

"At least if we treat them like zombies we'll have some plan, which is better than no plan." Before the discussion could devolve to two people shouting at each other while I kept staring at the chaos just outside the window, a bloody corpse came up the nearby stairwell. He must have been a senior in life but not on the football team because I didn't recognize him and his torn, gore-strewn clothes meant he couldn't have been one of the portal zombies.

True to Jerry's claims, he hadn't climbed the staircase; he'd crawled instead, probably drawn by our raised voices. We fled. The old science lab - "old" only because the funds had run out almost as soon as the school had been built - was too cramped to hold a full class at a time, two lines of bargain bin kitchen islands pretending to be lab stations offering plenty of places for a trio of terrified students to hide.

We holed up in the back, next to the dangerous substances locker which had never held anything worse than hydrochloric acid and even that had been stolen back in our freshman year and never replaced. We held our collective breath as shambling steps approached from outside, hoping fervently that the zombie wouldn't get in. Naturally, it did, stumbling on a broken leg that would have made the sorry-looking, battered, bloody guy look kinda silly as he shuffled around... if he hadn't been a literal man-eating zombie.

"Shit," I cursed under my breath, a sentiment we all shared. The zombie wasn't the problem; it was too slow to catch up if we were careful and quick enough.

"We need to get out of here before more of them turn up." The top floor having proven less than safe was a much bigger issue, and victims turning into more zombies just like in the damn movies was worse. Unfortunately, the zombie was not cooperating.

"It's just standing at the door," Mandy whispered back and true enough the dead guy was blocking our only exit.

"We can't... we can't get out!"

"Then we kill it," Jerry added, a strange gleam in his eye as he stared at the zombie.

"Just a head shot and..."

"You don't know that!" Mandy almost shouted and the zombie's head turned into our direction.

"You don't know anything about-" The zombie charged... at maybe the speed of a brisk walk. The other girl screamed and fell back while Jerry fumbled open a drawer, spilling everything from glass test tubes to brass weight scales on the floor. There was nothing sharp or dangerous to fight the zombie with. There wasn't anywhere to flee to but the corridor outside, which soon would be full of more zombies. Which is why I picked up the nearest chair and swung.

"Fuck you and the stupid B-movie you got out of!" I shouted as I knocked the dead thing off its feet.

"This is for making me run screaming like a little kid!" I slammed the chair down on its torso with my whole body behind the swing, cracking the wooden seat and back and bending the cheap metal legs. If it did anything, the dead thing hardly noticed; it just tried to get up.

"This is for killing my second favorite teacher!" I swung the chair around full circle, like throwing a fellow cheerleader at the top of a pyramid. The blow rattled my bones but knocked the zombie back several paces.

"And this is for messing up an exam I'd actually studied for!" Chair held like a battering ram, I charged the damn thing, yelling my frustration and fear at its dead, slack-jawed face. I slammed into the bigger but far less balanced body and pushed it back, pinning it against the wall with all my momentum and with one of the chair's metal legs impaling it through the torso. Instead of keeling over it tried to bite and grab me, pushing both chair and yours truly back with ease.

It was all I could do to keep the thing pinned against the wall as it bucked and rained awkward blows in my direction, the only reason it didn't simply bowl me over its lack of balance and coordination. Then out of nowhere a small hammer struck the zombie in the head, leaving a bloody wedge-shaped mark over its right eye.

"Take that!" Jerry cried his inventive battle cry, flailing at the thing's head again and again, missing more often than not but leaving the zombie's face increasingly bloody and with fewer and fewer teeth. I had no idea how long this went on other than my muscles burning, my ribs aching something fierce and my breath getting increasingly short.

After what felt like hours but probably was a minute or two there was a dull crack, the hammerhead sunk into the zombie's brow, and the dead thing collapsed as if its strings had been cut... shortly followed by me stumbling back, toppling, and being hit in the face by the chair.

"Fucking OW!" Word to the wise; being hit in the face by (or with) a chair hurts.

"You... you killed it!" Mandy stammered, unable to believe what she had just seen. Then again, neither could I.

"Hell yeah, we killed it!" Jerry crowed, in far better spirits than us girls.

"Told you head shots were the way to go."

"Yes, yes, you were right," I grudgingly admitted then huffed.

"Hail the conquering heroes. Now what are we going to do about the remaining several hundred waiting for us downstairs?" But Jerry was no longer listening; he was staring at nothing, probably relieving our triumphant victory in his head, or something.

"We can't just run, can we?" Mandy asked, already knowing the answer.

"If it took all that just to kill one... what are we gonna do?"

"I, for one, am going to lie down right here until my lungs stop trying to jump out of my rib cage through my nose and my everything stops feeling like it's on fire." I did just that with a groan of relief, the cold floor at my back a temporary reprieve.

"Don't bother me for anything short of the world en-" I paused, thought that through and sighed.

"OK, just shout if more zombies come up. Not like we can do anything else just now."

"Guys, you're not going to believe this!" Jerry shouted and both Mandy and I winced. He was totally going to draw more zombies down on us.

"Shut up, Mathews, I'm trying not to puke here."

"No, you'll really want to see this!" the nerdy boy scrambled into our field of view with the hammer he'd killed the zombie with and... I blinked and tried to understand what I was seeing.

"What the fuck?!" Mandy squealed and stumbled back, almost as scared of what Jerry held in his hands as she'd been of the zombie.

"Is that hammer... sparking with lightning?"

"I was wrong. We aren't in a movie," the nerdy boy whispered with awe reserved for seeing major stars up close or being given your first credit card.

"We're in a computer game!" He was totally right; we didn't believe him.