Z is for Zombie

Chapter 9

2007-08-07T21:09:00.000-04:00

“David!” Emily strained her hushed voice in a quiet scream and then pleaded, silently for the right to stay on the second floor.

“No, Emily, we've got to go.”

“Guys?” Denise crackled again. “Are you still there?”

Emily stare hard at David and shook her head emphatically. “Yes,” he answered, returning Emily's gaze. “What should we do?”

“Get down to the office and make an announcement on the loudspeaker, tell everyone to hag a t-shirt out their window if their safe. I don't know if anyone ever got to call the police but we should do that too. Do either of you have your cell phones?”

“No,” they answered in unison. The school had a strict no cell phone policy. Students were only allowed to have them, turned off, in their lockers. They could only turn them on after the final afternoon bell rang. Emily stopped even bringing hers into the building.

“Yeah, none of have any either – see if you can make a call downstairs or otherwise, ask people to do that in the announcement.” There was a pause. “You should go now.”

Of course, Emily thought. And then they did.

The easy way to the office was the way Emily had come up – across the courtyard and through the nearest stairway. Clearly, that was not an option. While it did occur to her that the infected seemed to move en masse and perhaps they were all pulsating at that one second floor door. And perhaps they could just jog down any one of the other stairwells and stroll leisurely and unimpeded right back into the main office, which Emily had so narrowly escaped from.

Emily shook that hope off as immediately as she had allowed it and she and David stepped out into the brilliantly bright hallway. They turned – straightaway – and moving in the opposite direction from the classroom where Denise was still conducting a symphony of clanging desks.

Chapter 8

2007-08-06T19:36:00.001-04:00

“He sacrificed himself,” David whispered, his lips so close to Emily’s ear that the nearly brushed her left lobe.

“I don’t even know his first name,” she choked.

They had scooted themselves to the far corner of the storeroom and though they had both secretly lost hope of a successful escape, they lunged deep into silent deliberations. They couldn’t kill themselves - any means they had at their disposal would be too painful, they were more likely to mutilate.

“So, what do we do?” Emily had said the sentence several times in her head before finally muttering it to David. There was no answer and she almost didn’t care. She’d spent the last two hours struggling to survive and in the darkness it all seemed so futile.

“Is there a heating duct in here? They always do that in the movies.”

“This is a closet; I don’t think there is any ventilation.” Emily immediately felt light-headed. Then she added, almost callously, “We’re going to die in here.”

“Don’t say that,” David sighed, conscious of the excess air he’d just expelled. “Hey,” he muttered in his softest voice.

Emily turned to look at him; she’d nearly adjusted to the lack of light. His eyes still held the crispness of hope.

“There is something I’ve wanted to say to you for a long time, and well, I guess this -“

The sound of crashing metal jarred them out of intimacy and Emily felt a twinge of relief to be spared whatever confession David was preparing to share. Pounding like thunder and energetic ululations echoed through the hallway beyond the closet door. They could see the lumbering feet shuffling away from them and renewed energy surged beneath Emily’s chest.

The walkie-talkie crackled. “Emily!” it screamed and then went to static.

Emily fished through her backpack. She had turned the volume down since she’d first been contacted in Freedman’s office but in the silent store room it still sounded loud. She was relieved to note that the twisted ankles beyond the door continued to move away from them.

“Yes! This is Emily!” She depressed the button once more to utter, “Over.”

“It’s Denise – I think we cleared them away from you. Is David still – ok?”

“Yeah, we’re here together.”

“Do you think you could make it downstairs? I think that most of the school is still in the classrooms. If you could get down to the office you could make an announcement.”

Emily caught herself rolling her eyes. She supposed that Denise had done a great thing in luring the zombies away from the storeroom, but Emily was beginning to feel as though she was starring in a one man show. She didn’t understand what made her especially qualified to navigate the infested hallways below them, but Daniel nodded and she uttered “okay” into the walkie talkie.

Apologies

2007-08-03T14:49:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers,
I am extremely sorry to leave you hanging two Thursdays in a row, but work-related ravel, a lack of access to the internet and major life changes helped prevent me from both writing and posting in the recent weeks. I promise an action packed week beginning on Monday with a post a day leading to the thrilling conclusion.

Thanks for sticking with me.

xo

Chapter 7

2007-07-30T11:03:00.001-04:00

The sounds echoed through Emily’s head and everything, including her thoughts, seemed to move in slow motion. The broken glass, she realized, must have come from one of the classroom doors, which seemed impossible since those windows were supposed to be bulletproof and unbreakable.

She turned, as did David, who had already cocked the slingshot and was frantically looking back and forth between the two hallways that opened to the corridor where they stood.

It happened like an avalanche – arms and legs flayed forward from the formerly empty hallway to their left. Each body pushed and pulsed, unconcerned with the comfort of intentions or the others surrounding it.

David launched a lone marble, which struck a tall boy in the left eye. His aim was perfect, but there were at least 20 of them and the idea of David mowing them with decorative stones was ridiculous. He poised himself to launch another, but Emily grabbed his arm and yanked him down the hallway. Her heart was pounding and she was terrified, but she managed to navigate their way back to Mrs. Walsh’s classroom.

Emily knocked once but as she raised her fist to complete the code, the teaming mass was nearly upon them and opening the door would mean sentencing Walsh’s entire classroom of unarmed students to undeath.

Emily hesitated.

Then, she was on the ground. She heard David scream and felt him pull at her shoulders. She saw Phillips throw the door opened and lance a woman through the eye with a wooden pointer. Emily gagged as the woman convulsed and dropped to the floor. It was her history teacher, Ms. Hill.

She looked back and forth amongst the expressionless faces placing them in the classroom she had left that morning. Every single one of them was there. How could they all be infected?

Emily was still scrambling to get to her feet. She saw David, who was still loading and discharging his slingshot, kick the safety ax across the hall floor to Phillips. She saw Phillips lunge at one of her classmates, his eyes wild. He screamed, “Go! Run!” and then Emily felt her face slam into the floor and everything went black. She felt her body being lifted and moving forward and through the darkness she heard Phillips grunting and David panting. And that was all she could remember.

When Emily woke up it was cold. She lay there, motionless, on the linoleum floor for many moments before raising her arm and letting out a soft gasp as pain seared through her upper body. A hand clamped over her mouth and the dark room became immediately tense. She struggled to pull away until her restrainer thrust his face close to her own. It was David. His eyes were flooded with urgency, but softened as she nodded; replaying in flashes the choppy violence that had brought her to the cold linoleum of the janitor’s closet.

David removed his hand from her mouth and she opened it as if to ask to speak. He shook his head and motioned to the slowly, lumbering shadows that peeked intermittently under the doorframe. He shook his head again when Emily mouthed, “Phillips?” And then they both stared into the near darkness, very conscious of the sound the stale air made as it escaped their lungs.

There was, as far as Emily could tell, no way that she and David would escape.

She pulled herself up to sit with her back propped against a box of school-grade toilet paper and pushed a clump of matted hair away from her face. Even in the low-light she could make out the mosaic of purple and red splotches that covered her bare arms – a mixture of bruises and blood, not all of the latter was her own. She looked at David, he was flushed with terror, but as she searched herself she found none; there was sadness and exhaustion and hunger, but she no longer felt afraid.

Stuffed in her right hip pocket was a crumpled hall pass; forged. She smiled - one act of uncharacteristic truancy saved her from succumbing to the ungainly masses groaning beyond the storeroom door.

Chapter 6

2007-07-22T23:24:00.000-04:00

“They’re in the stairwell I came up through, is there anyway we can secure it?” Emily asked thinking of the bodies in the hall that had just aimlessly clutched the air separating her from them. She doubted they had the sort of gross motor skills needed to unlatch a door, but knew she would rather not wait to find out.

“There are chains in my office,” answered Phillips, but clarified at Emily's puzzled look. "The 'janitor's closet'."

“Alright. I’ll go get them,” volunteered Emily immediately, the words escaping her mouth before she had a chance to reconsider the new heroism she’d assumed.

“I’ll go, too,” said David, stepping forward.

The other students looked on or looked away but remained largely immobile and completely silent. Emily got the feeling that survival was going to mean she did most of the work and like so many other group projects, the fate of others would hinge upon her effort.

She looked at the clock.

First period had not yet ended – she would have still been in Ms. Hills’s class if she had not slipped out to meet Roy. And if the school was not slowly being overrun with zombies.

“Let’s get some weapons,” she sighed and noticed that the task suddenly felt disturbingly routine.

Emily opened her bag and laid the worn but sturdy paddle, the slingshot, the pocket knife, and the paperweights out on the teacher’s desk. “Where is Mrs. Walsh?” she asked, noticing her absence.

“She didn’t come in today,” answered Phillips, “so they asked me to fill in.” He looked resentfully towards the students. Many of whom, Emily guessed, did not even know the head custodian’s name and had likely given him a hard time when he walked into the classroom earlier that morning.

David rifled through Mrs. Walsh’s desk and came up with two giant novelty pencils (sharpened) and three pairs of scissors.

“Wait!” he said through a crooked smile and dumped out a glass vase holding pens that were made to look like sunflowers. Marbles rolled across the desk and David scrambled to shove them in handfuls into the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt. He grabbed the slingshot and grinned.

They divided the scissors and oversized pencils between them and Emily clutched the paddle she was coming to think of as her own in her right hand. David shouldered the empty backpack, which they planned to fill with supplies and potential new weapons. They stepped out into the still hallway.

“Which key?” Emily asked, turning back to Phillips and proudly holding Ms. Freedman’s keys in front of him.

“The red one,” he answered, smiling. “The chains should be in the cabinet above my desk. There are Master locks in there as well.”

“Fine.” Emily turned with a flourish and grabbed David’s arm to pull him away from the door. “We’ll knock twice.”

Though the exchange with Phillips and their armament had taken only five minutes, Emily felt it had been ages and she realized how urgently they needed to secure the stairwell door. They slipped quickly and wordlessly through the hall, remaining for the most part in the center of the corridors moving against walls to take wide turns when approaching corners. Most of the classrooms were dark in adherence to the Code Red instructions, which required that the lights be turned off and exterior windows – a feature of every classroom – be covered.

“This is it,” whispered Emily, inserting the key into the waiting lock. David was behind her, his back to her and the door, with the cocked slingshot loaded and ready to fire.

“You go in,” he answered in a similar murmur. “I’ll keep you covered.”

Emily slipped in through the opened door and immediately threw the cabinet opened pulling the chains and locks from the shelf. She surveyed the contents of Phillips’s small office – no window, no vent, just a cold linoleum floor and several stacked boxes of toilet paper.

“C’mon, Emily.”

She turned to leave and her eyes brushed over a safety ax. She grabbed it, placed it in the bag and pushed on David’s back.

“Let’s get to the doors,” Emily said pulling the shutting the closet closed behind her.

They ran; Emily’s speed only slightly inhibited by the weight of the heavy chain link she carried. They passed Mrs. Walsh’s room and made it to the doors in no time. Breathlessly (David more so then Emily), they wrapped one length of clanging chain around the bars on the doors.

As they did, they heard suddenly focused movement in the upper stairway. And when they snapped the lock together there was a swift thud against the other side of the door, then they heard several deep ethereal moans, and almost immediately in the hallway directly behind David and Emily – there was the sound of breaking glass.

Chapter 5

2007-07-19T10:08:00.000-04:00

It took several moments for Emily’s eyes to adjust to the muted light of the windowless stairway and by the time she could see clearly it was nearly too late to raise Freedman’s paddle in defense.

A gray-faced sophomore in a pleated junior varsity cheerleading skirt lunged at her with outstretched arms. Emily ducked to the left then brought the paddle against the attackers blond skull. The instant the weapon made contact, dread coursed through Emily’s veins. Was this girl actually infected as Roy had been? Could she ever be sure? There was a wild crack when the bat hit the girl’s skull and tears leaked from Emily's eyes as she raised the weapon and struck once more. Her victim let out an eerie moan and wrapped four clammy, pulseless fingers around Emily’s ankle. Convinced of her righteousness, Emily violently shook the clutched leg, brought the paddle down again, then pushed the girl’s body out into the courtyard and pulled the door shut.

Before she could turn around, Emily heard rumbling in the hallway behind her. She swung around quickly and threw the paddle out in front of her, but lost her grip. It made contact with the doorframe and crashed to the ground.

She looked up to see a gang of hobbling classmates inching towards her. Some of their bodies were wildly twisted and damaged, arms studded with sparkling shards of glass, faces smeared with blood. She stared, stunned; then scrambled to reach the paddle before the figures could push through the doorway.

She shoved the blunt end of the weapon into the temple of a gangly upperclassman – it pushed him back but his arm still reached towards her. She pulled out the pocket knife and waved it vigorously but quickly recognized inevitable doom close combat would mean.

So, she ran.

Before doing so, she gave the door an enthusiastic slam and used the momentum to propel herself up the stairs. The door had not latched, as it was blocked by two legs and several outstretched arms that flayed under the fervent pressure. Emily knew, as she bolted quickly up the two sets of stairs, that soon a hoard of unsteady bodies would fill the stairwell and that the reinforced doors she was about to pass through would be the only barrier between them and the tenuous safety on the second floor.

She griped the door handle and pressed on the metal button releasing the latch – then, holding the paddle above her head with her left hand and pulling the door towards her with her right, she leapt through the opening and was immediately charged.

Emily was pummeled to the ground by a girl much smaller than her. She held the paddle horizontally between both hands and pushed fiercely at the girl who flew back and skidded on her rear. Before she could rise, Emily was above her with the paddled pulled back over her right should her, ready to attack.

“What’s your name?” Emily demanded.

“Denise.”

Emily examined the girl. Her skin was a warm brown - neither anemic nor slacken. And she looked Emily in the eye - she lowered her weapon. “What are you doing in the hallway?”

“I was in the bathroom when the alarm went off,” she answered, accepting Emily’s outstretched hand. “I stayed there until I saw a bunch of guys swarm on a teacher in the glass corridor downstairs and I decided to get the hell out of here.”

Emily didn’t say anything.

“I know they tell us to stay away from the windows during Code Red, but I’d heard a gun shot and I was alone.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you Emily? I think you know my brother, Elijah.”

“Yeah, I know him.” Emily smiled but the expression dissolved immediately. She did know Elijah. He was genuine and funny and a good friend of Roy’s. She hadn’t seen him that morning. “C’mon, I’m supposed to meet Mr. Phillips in here.”

Emily knocked twice, as she said she would, and held her breath as she waited for the door to open.

“Emily?” said a soft, tentative voice on the other side.

“Yes and Denise Harper.” Emily answered.

“There is no one else in the hallway?”

“Not that I can tell, Mr. Phillips. Please let us in.”

The lock snapped and the door knob turned and opened to a room half full of weary students and a noticeably absent teacher.

“Are you alright, Emily?” asked a boy propped against the far wall. He inspected her bruised arms and wild hair with concern.

Her eyes soften when they made contact with the inquirer’s. She’d known his voice for ages. His name was David.

Chapter 4

2007-07-16T09:56:00.001-04:00

“Ms. Freedman?” the walkie-talkie crackled again and Emily heard grunts beyond the locked door, which approached at the sound of the static. She depressed the TALK button hurriedly and responded in a strained whisper, “Yes! Someone’s here – this is Emily James, I am in Freedman’s office – she left me here and locked the door, and,” she paused, “they are out there.”

“I know. Over.” Said the voice.

“What should I do?”

There was silence on the other end and Emily waited and in those instances the reality of her desperation began to sink in. She was miles away from where she had been this morning, seated in Ms. Hill's class anxiously as her eyes repeatedly darted towards the clock.

“This is Mr. Phillips. Are you alright, Emily? Over.” the walkie-talkie finally implored.

Emily fiddled frantically with the dials on the top of the receiver to turn down the volume, she could hear motion concentrating just outside the office - the direction and intensity of which became more focused with each static transmission. She put down the walkie-talkie and pushed Ms. Freedman's heavy metal desk in front of the door.

“I’m okay, there are a lot of them trying to get through the door – can you get me out of here?”

“Emily, can you get out through the window? Also, say ‘over’ when you are done talking – otherwise I just keep waiting for you to say something else. Over.”

She surveyed the small slanted window and doubted it. “Maybe?” she replied. Then depressed the TALK button again, “Over.”

“I think that is the only way – look out the window, across the courtyard, on the second floor. Over.” Phillips crackled.

Emily squinted through the daylight to see a muted light flashing off and on in a second floor room caddy-corner to the office she was presently in.

“I see you. Over.” Emily said.

“Good, I am in room 203. There is no one in the courtyard. If you can get out through the window run straight across to the door to your right – come up the stairs – the hallways on the second floor are clear, as far as I can tell. Over.”

“Alright,” said Emily tentatively. “I’ll knock twice. Over.”

“Yeah – I think I will know it is you.” Phillips answered. “Good luck, Emily. Over.”

“Wait!” Phillips’s voice crackled through again. “Can you find anything in there that you can use as a weapon? Over.”

Emily surveyed the lot of office supplies strewn across the assistant principal’s desk, “I see a stapler…some thumbtacks…a paperweight…” Emily trailed off as she noticed a handle poking out from fro behind a file cabinet –she yanked at it to reveal an antique wooden paddle. The kind, she imagined, were used as a classroom management tool decades ago. There was a note tied to the handle:

Joanne,
Keep ‘em in line!
Love,
Aunt Sarah

Emily remembered Roy telling her that Ms. Freedman has let slip some off-handed comment about boys like him making her wish the school could use real discipline on the students.

“I found Freedman’s paddle. Over.”

“Good, that should work. You’ve got to hit these things in the head – they won’t stop any other way. Over.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Emily chuckled slightly. “Over.”

Emily thought she should tell Mr. Phillips that she understood. That Roy had attacked her, that she’d been within ear shot of Officer Daniels’s discharged gun, that she’d figured out that she was in the kind of unreal reality she’d only imagined possible in her most vulnerable, lonely nightmares; but the thudding on the other side of Freedman’s door was a pounding now, which shook the hinges.

“Mr. Phillips? I’m on my way. Over.”

Emily quickly swept the room for anything she could use to defend herself – shoving the paperweight and a foot long glass tablet inscribed with the phrase, “The Children Are Our Future,” into her backpack. She turned to the window but then back to the desk and pulled at the bottom right drawer. Locked. She remembered Ms. Freedman dropping her cell phone into that drawer when it had been confiscated from Emily the previous year.

She searched around the desk for the key and then remembered the jangling sound of the bunch of them as Ms. Freedman locked Emily into the office upon her exit. An instant later, as the thudding against the door began to inch the desk away from it, Emily heard the clanking sound of keys hitting the floor. She crouched down, smooshing her face against the carpet to peer through the inch and a half clearing below the tenuously hinged door; there were the keys.

She grabbed a pencil from the desk and slid it along the floor. Her fingers brushed the carpet on the undead side of the door. She managed to hook the pencil through a key ring and successfully pull it back into the office. Along the way, the keys bumped against the soft, scuffed beige leather of Ms. Freedman’s sensible pumps, the left of which was turned in at an anatomically impossible angle.

Emily shuddered and pulled herself up, fumbling with the keys until the right small silver one finally clicked and turned. She pulled from the drawer - filled with cell phones, ipods and several issues of playboy - a four inch pocket knife, a slingshot, and (upon a second thought) two ipods. She thrust the keys and slingshot into her back pockets and the closed knife into her front.

Emily wedged two classroom management manuals against the hinges of the opened window and threw the bag out. Then she slid herself through, feet first, landing with a thud. She turned back to shove the manuals out of the way and popped the hinges up to close the window as much as she could.

The courtyard was empty and the door was just a sprint away. As she ran she turned in horror towards the glass walkway to her left, it was full of hobbling bodies which had turned their attention to the enclosed quad. To her.

She pulled on the unlocked door and opened it to the stale dark stairwell.

Chapter 3

2007-07-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

“Someone broke into the school!” Emily yelled in the split second before anyone in the office responded to the commotion in the hallway.

“Code Red!” the assistant principle shouted frantically, emerging from her office, walkie-talkie in hand. “Sue, please make the announcement – teachers and students are to lock their doors and stay inside the classroom until otherwise instructed. Dr. Larkin will be giving further instructions. Emily James, my office.”

“What are you doing out of class?” Ms. Freedman asked as she closed the door. Emily became acutely aware of her confinement. There was a single two by three foot window to the right of Ms. Freedman’s desk and it could not be opened all the way, just slanted ajar at a 45 degree angle.

“Ms. Freedman, it is a really complicated story and I am afraid it will take way too long to explain it – and I think what is going on is a real emergency

“How do you know this?”

“Okay, I skipped class to meet Roy.”

“Roy Cunningham.” This was not a question. Ms. Freedman glared at handwritten notes on her desk. “Emily, your teachers and your counselor, Mr. Johnson, have been concerned about your behavior for several weeks. You’ve skipped a number of classes and are frequently tardy and your choice of company…”

Why were they sitting here? What did any of this matter now?

“…your grades have even started to drop.”

Grades? Minutes ago she saw a young man relentlessly attack her completely unphased as his forearm split and tore through his wrist. How could her slipping grades possibly compare?

“Do you hate school? Have you been feeling alienated?”

“What? No.” Emily muttered.

“Have you been feeling angry lately?” Ms. Freedman dropped her voice in forced sympathy.

“No!” Emily felt her face grow hot.

“Have you had any thoughts of suicide?”

Emily didn’t respond. Why was she doing this? Why were they still sitting there? Emily had heard hurried bodies move back and forth outside Ms. Freedman’s locked door since they entered the office. There was obvious commotion in the school - Emily probably understood it’s origin more than anyone else, and yet, there she sat confined and powerless as she underwent an amateur psychological evaluation.

“Have you ever had thoughts of killing someone else?”

“No! Ms. Freedman, why are you asking me these questions?”

“You were in the hallway, speaking to Officer Daniels just before those shots were fired.”

“Shot.” Emily muttered.

“Pardon me?”

“There was only one shot fired.”

Ms. Freedman opened her mouth but closed it before she said anything. Emily leaned forward, “Ms. Freedman, I have nothing to do with what happened in the hallway – I skipped class to meet Roy but when he came to the school he attacked me, at first I thought he was drunk but there was something totally different about him. I was like something was missing.”

“Are you telling me drugs are involved?”

Maybe? Emily thought. “I don’t know what is ‘involved.’ I just know -- Roy attacked me, he grabbed onto my arm and he wouldn’t let go, it was like he was trying to - eat it, or something.”

“Eat what? Your arm?”

Emily nodded, but before she could elaborate there were a series of screams from the main office beyond the door and then the ghastly moan she’d heard from Roy. Only this sound was much bigger, there were more Roys.

“You stay in here.” Ms. Freedman demanded as she got up from her desk.

“No! Ms. Freedman, please don’t go out there. You don’t know what they are; I don’t think you can protect yourself.”

“Emily, what are you telling me – what do you know about this? What has Roy done?”

“I don’t think it is just Roy anymore if it was even Roy at all. I think -” she hesitated, “I think they are zombies.”

In spite of the tension in the office and the panic in the room just beyond it, Ms. Freedman actually laughed. “Zombies? This is ridiculous. I need you to keep away from the window and stay put. I will be back in a few minutes – we are not done here.”

Ms. Freedman swept through the door and slammed it shut behind her. Emily sat stunned for a moment. It seemed to be so against protocol for an administrator to spend those precious moments locked in a room with a single student while chaos ensued through the halls. But, she realized then why Ms. Freedman had spent so much time questioning her, why her personal record was strewn across the desk, why the door had been locked on her way out.

It didn’t seem fair that four weeks of novice truancy earned her prime suspect – or at the very least – accomplice – status. As she came to understand what was going on in the school, she understood that she was completely powerless and alone. She heard a struggle down the corridor – screams and angry yelling followed and she felt certain that Ms. Freedman would not return as she had promised.

She looked out the small window, angled ajar to allow the light spring breeze to occasionally waft through. The enclosed courtyard that it looked out upon was still, as it always was. The office lights flickered for a moment and Emily felt the beginning of true despair – she jumped at the sound of earsplitting static.

“Freedman?” the walkie-talkie on a bookshelf crackled. “Are you there? Over.”

Chapter 2

2007-07-09T19:15:00.001-04:00

“Roy?”

He groaned from deep within his chest and lunged at her, the door still standing between them. He had trouble understanding the obstacle in front of him and with that thrust he was only able to position his upper body on the Emily side of the door.

He grabbed her wrist and she screamed. Everything flashed through her mind in an instant – the shamble, the groan, the slacked graying skin. Emily did not know what had happened to Roy or why he was pulling her arm towards his lips – they’re corners crusted red, but she knew she shouldn’t let him nibble on her flesh, nor should she stick around to try and figure out what was wrong with him.

She tried to yank her arm away, but couldn’t escape his grip. They were nearly matched in strength – Emily, a slight athlete and Roy, a broad but squishy couch potato.

Roy was concentrating everything on bringing Emily’s arm into his mouth, ignoring the door between them. Emily violently yanked her arm – Roy’s right arm broke its grasp but his left hand held tight and this action brought his face uncomfortably close to her own. Then she quickly yanked on the door handle with her free hand snapping Roy’s left arm against its weight.

She repeatedly slammed the door until he released her and she continued to aggressively pump the door amazed that Roy persisted as his arm became purple and what appeared to be a broken femur began to poke out of his forearm. Finally, she held the door tight, pinning his arm in the frame; when he brought his body up on it, Emily slammed against it with all her might, sending Roy toppling backwards. She pulled the door closed to hear the satisfying latch.

Roy was struggling to get back up and Emily knew that he would not stay down for long. Secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t penetrate the school’s paranoid post-Columbine security system – especially with his fine motor skills clearly inhibited. Emily turned and sprinted towards the first floor office. She failed to notice the figure emerging from the shallow of the adjacent hallway, it moved in Roy’s slumped stumble.

As she reached the office, the school’s resource officer barked at her. “Emily! No running in the halls!”

“I’m sorry Officer Daniels, it’s an emergency.”

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“Umm,” Emily fumbled. She thought of the pass in her hip pocket. She’d forged it to meet with Roy. First, though, she’d stolen it from the desk of her fumbling Trig teacher.

“Emily, I’ve heard about this new side of you – skipping class, hanging out with Roy Cunningham…”

“But, seriously! Officer Daniels, this is an emergency. Roy is outside of the school and – he – he’s not right. He attacked me.”

“What were you doing outside the school?”

“I – I was meeting Roy. I was skipping class – but I am telling the truth! Look!”

Emily thrust her well-bruised wrist into Officer Daniels face. She examined it and her eyes softened a bit. “Roy did this to you?”

“Yes.”

“What were you two fighting about?”

“Nothing.”

“He just hit you?”

“No, he didn’t hit me…he tried to bite my arm. He – he wasn’t right.”

“No, Emily, if a boy hits you it is never right.”

“No! Officer Daniels!” Emily was frantic, why were they just standing there? Why wasn’t anything happening? “I am serious, there is something going on here – he wasn’t acting like himself – it was like he wasn’t thinking for himself – or like he wasn’t thinking at all. But, we are wasting time; please make an intruder alert.”

“I understand that you had a fight with your boyfriend, Emily, and that he might be angry, but…”

“But what Officer Daniels?” Emily was irate. “This is exactly the sort of thing you all use the intruder alert for!”

“Alright, alright, you go into the office and I’ll go check down the hall. Wait; is that Roy by the water fountain?”

Emily squinted at the figure several yards away from them. During morning classes the school many of the hallway lights were dimmed or turned off to save energy. She could tell, though, that the person was a boy and was much smaller than Roy. “No.”

“Well, I’ll go speak with him. If there is something going on you should be in the office.”

Emily reluctantly slipped into the school’s main office as Daniels took off down the hallway. She was satisfied, though, that the officer’s tone had changed to a much less patronizing tenor. And then, as if her mind was working in slow-motion, she realized that the kid in the hallway, by the water fountain had the same stilted gait as Roy. And it was at that very instant - before she could open her mouth, before she could warn the administrators with their walkie-talkies and their isolated authority – Officer Daniel’s screamed and a gun was fired once, and then – silence.

Chapter 1

2007-07-05T09:15:00.000-04:00

“…once Aristide left – and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether he choose to or not – the violence continued to spread throughout the island. Now, I want you all to read the article I passed out at the beginning of class and start to formulate a timeline of events. Emily?”

“Ms. Hill – I have a pass for the Library, I’m supposed to go down there at 8:30.”

“Alright, bring it up here, I’ll sign it. Will you be back before the bell?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Write down the homework and don’t forget your decade project is due next week.”

Emily nodded.

“Brian? Jenna, can you wake up Brian?”

Emily turned to see Brian slumped to the side of his desk, most of the color gone from his face. He didn’t seem to stir when Jenna poked him with her finger, his body just shifted. Emily rolled her eyes as she scribbled the reading assignment in her planner, Brian was a burn-out; he rarely made it through most any class without nodding off.

Retrieving the endorsed pass from her teacher, Emily walked out of history class pulling the door closed behind her. The hallways were still, classes would not be dismissed for another hour. She walked down the south-wing stairwell, and out the side door, propping it opened with the loop of chain-metal attached to the interior side of the door. She sat on the stoop adjacent to the walk-way and waited.

She was meeting a boy.

Unlike so many of her classmates, nothing Emily had done in the 17 years of her life had been shocking. Nothing had deviated from the expectations prescribed by years of primetime sitcoms and glowing parent-teacher conferences. Except now as she planned to skip the greater part of the school making-out with a boy and pretend for as long as she could that she was someone different.

She’d been doing this for the past month, with increasing frequency. But she was also acutely aware of the fact that this lifestyle couldn’t last much longer – soon she’d have to straighten up and be a good girl again. She knew the next decade of her life had already been mapped out: the valedictorian sash, the pile of acceptance letters, (near) flawless GPA, even the nebulous but exciting career path she would venture. She knew she was falling now, it was part of her plan, and she fully intended on catching herself – just not yet.

But now, the boy; he, Roy, apart from having an awful name, was one of those very bright, thoughtful kids who is wholly uninterested in succeeding in school but shows up nonetheless. Rarely does homework, often appears in a daze only to pipe up with an insightful comment or an obnoxious question that befuddles the teacher. Teachers didn’t like him, everyone thought he was on drugs, but despite his lack of motivation he got perfect test scores.

Emily had been seeing Roy for the past four weeks and was drifting towards infatuation. She’d never dated before and only ever kissed a bespectacled, inept 15-year-old at a family wedding when she was 13. She discovered, to her horror, two weeks later that he was actually her fourth cousin.

Intellectually she knew that this was what teenage girls do; fall irrationally in love with the first boy that shows interested in them. The first - at least - who does not also share portions of her DNA.

And then, there he was – coming from across the street – moving so slowing Emily nearly leap out of her skin with anticipation. Sometimes she thought he only slowed to a crawl when he was within sight of her to force all that toe curling and teeth grinding that made those first kisses so much like a reward. Only, he seemed to be overdoing it a bit; this time his indifference to her presence was almost offensive – as if he didn’t even see her.

As he crossed the street, his stagger became less steady and he flayed his upper body to keep from falling over. “Oh my god,” Emily said silently, “he’s drunk.” And at once she was furious that she had slipped out of class and waited in this schoolgirl stupor for a guy who was enough of a loser get wasted and then come to school on a Tuesday morning. His inching aimlessness was even more irritating now and she felt her stomach flutter in an entirely different way than it did 15 minutes ago.

Is this what young love is? All tenuous and volatile: you’re dizzy and amorous one minute – queasy and enraged the next? And there was Roy, still 10 yards away and not even looking at her, not even showing the slightest bit of remorse that she had lied to two teachers and forged a pass and planned to miss three classes just to hang out with a guy who didn’t even have the good sense to wait until lunch to get wasted.

God, why wouldn’t be just look at her? “ROY!” she yelled and his head turned with a snap and fixated on her – he continued to move slowly and while he was definitely heading her way his gate still had that directionless ramble that had infuriated her in the first place.

“You’re an asshole!” she yelled again and turned back to the side door she had left propped opened. “Screw this; I’m going back to class.”

Roy persisted in his amble and as angry as she was, Emily relished that dramatic feeling of being pursued. She thought about turning back and letting him try to kiss her, the idea of coyly turning her face away from his seemed quaintly cinematic. Instead she let the door slam behind her. She still scrambled around the corner to the main entrance where she could laugh or roll her eyes at her inebriated, locked out, love interest. She planned, as she came up to the doors, to stare at Roy and then walk away as coolly as he had approached, but as she reached them she saw Roy clumsily pressing his body against the windowless side door she’s just escaped through.

And he didn’t look good.

His skin was pale and slightly slack and his arms were covered in clotted scratches. Emily felt a slight tinge of remorse for rebuffing him before he could explain. She pushed on the handle on the front door closest to Roy, but it was bolted to prevent truants from fleeing. Roy turned at the soft click of the immobile lock and when Emily saw his face her heart sunk. He looked horrendous, his eyes were vacant and sad and his mouth and chin were covered in blood.

“Oh, Roy,” she muttered urgently as she pushed on each successively (secured) handle trying to open the door to him. “What happened to you?” When she made it to the last in the row of eight, the latch gently gave and the door flung opened.

Roy shambled to her and let out an ethereal moan. Emily hesitated. Between them stood the open door and through its bullet-proof pane of glass Emily remained immobile as she watched Roy first knocked his body against it then wrap his worn fingers around its frame.

Prologue

2007-07-01T22:31:00.000-04:00

When Emily woke up it was cold. She lay there, motionless, on the linoleum floor for many moments before raising her arm and letting out a soft gasp as pain seared through her upper body. A hand clamped over her mouth and the dark room became immediately tense. She struggled to pull away until her restrainer thrust his face close to her own. It was David. His eyes were flooded with urgency, but softened as she nodded; replaying in flashes the choppy violence that had brought her to the cold linoleum of the janitor’s closet.

David removed his hand from her mouth and she opened it as if to ask to speak. He shook his head and motioned to the slowly, lumbering shadows that peeked intermittently under the doorframe. He shook his head again when Emily mouthed, “Phillips?” And then they both stared into the near darkness, very conscious of the sound the stale air made as it escaped their lungs.

There was, as far as Emily could tell, no way that she and David would escape.

She pulled herself up to sit with her back propped against a box of school-grade toilet paper and pushed a clump of matted hair away from her face. Even in the low-light she could make out the mosaic of purple and red splotches that covered her bare arms – a mixture of bruises and blood, not all of the latter was her own. She looked at David, he was flushed with terror, but as she searched herself she found none; there was sadness and exhaustion and hunger, but she no longer felt afraid.

Stuffed in her right hip pocket was a crumpled hall pass; forged. She smiled - one act of uncharacteristic truancy saved her from succumbing to the ungainly masses groaning beyond the storeroom door.

2007-06-08T10:41:00.001-04:00

Series starts July 2, 2007.