Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance (30 page)

Baymiller’s English class. Now, normally English class was something of an oasis in the howling wilderness of high school for me. Not only was it my best subject, but from my seat I had a stellar view of Dee Dee Carrington, head cheerleader and magically delicious über-babe.

Her short pleated skirts and tight sweaters were legendary, but when she was in her two-piece cheerleading outfit, like today, she was a downright superhero goddess.

She was hard not to look at. I loved watching her dazzling honey-blond hair in that wedge cut, the way she tapped her luscious lips with her pencil when she was thinking, the way she sometimes idly toyed with her earlobe with her head lightly cocked to one side, the way she dangled her sandal off her foot as she sat back in her chair. I lived for those days when a chance exposure of skin would let me catch a glimpse of the perfect little dimples down in the small of her back. But what chance did a normal guy like me ever have with a hottie like her?

Pretty Ms. Baymiller, whom I always secretly thought had a quiet classic brunette hotness herself, had been leading us in a discussion of the Romance poets, and was 278

reading from William Blake’s “America: a Prophecy.” In hindsight, one particular passage stuck out at me:

“The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk and dry'd.

Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!

Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds and bars are burst…”

In the middle of her recital, a heavy hand thumped me on the shoulder. I jumped at the touch and turned around. It was Todd Brookshire glaring at me, of course. He was the burly, buzz-cut, no-necked star of the football team, and his steely pit bull eyes held pure menace. He slipped me a note without a word, and jerked his head at me in what seemed to be a command to turn around again. I obeyed and surreptitiously opened the folds of paper. It said:

I WANT TO FUCK U SO BAD

I stared at it, bug-eyed. He flicked the back of my head, hard, and his voice hissed in my ear: “Don’t be a spaz, McGowan! Hand it to Dee Dee!” Ms. Baymiller paused for a beat to peer over her book, then continued. No one else appeared to notice. Reluctantly, I folded it up again and as inconspicuously as I could manage, leaned over and stretched out my hand to try to get Dee Dee’s attention. She remained oblivious. Slowly, slowly, I reached out and only just managed to poke her upper arm with a corner of the note.

Disaster. Dee Dee yelped in surprise, shrill enough to startle the entire class. She turned on me, her normally delightsome face in a fierce death stare at the intrusion.

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“Jeremy!” Ms. Baymiller called out, freezing me instantly in place. “What is that note?

Bring it here.”

“It’s nothing, Ms. Baymiller.”

“Come on, let’s have it.”

I panicked. If she read it I was dead. “Honest, ma’am. It’s nothing. It’s just—”

My mind raced to come up with an reasonable alternative. “It’s just ... I—I wanted to ask Dee Dee to the senior prom.”
Oh my God,
I thought.
Did I really just say that?
The class erupted in a howl of laughter and Dee Dee’s face radiated outraged horror.

“Jerry McGowan, you pantywaist dorkwad geek,” she said, dripping disgust. “I wouldn’t go to the prom with—
you”
(she accented it like I was a used Band-Aid she just found in her bowl of breakfast cereal) “—if you were the last boy on Earth!” The class hooted again at the unexpected entertainment.

Ms. Baymiller restored order again. “All right now, that’s enough.” She graced me with a gentle smile and quietly added, “Jeremy, I don’t think I need to read the note.

Looks like you’ve got your answer.” Her sympathetic look implied she understood the situation was not what it seemed, or maybe it was just my hopeful imagination. I crumpled the note and stuffed it in my pocket, and for the rest of the hour basked stoically in my renewed social pariah status. When the bell rang, Todd paused just long enough to snarl, “You‘re so dead, McGowan!” and punch me in the shoulder on his way out.

* * * *

coach was a lesbian and that some kid had just up and collapsed in third-period biology class while dissecting a frog—the cause was epilepsy or rabies or evil chemicals or some new super-AIDS strain, depending on who was reporting the news. I dragged myself from class to class as best I could, tugging along the lead weight of my shame through the gauntlet of my peers.

As always, P.E. that afternoon offered still more opportunities to lower my morale. In the locker room afterwards, I decided it was prudent to avoid any more attention for a little bit and hid out in the bathroom. I wanted to wait to hit the showers until everybody was gone. I passed the time giving a mental pep talk to my reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t that I was a ninety-eight-lb. weakling or anything; it was just that that I wasn’t into the lame school sports activities. Next year at junior college I’d be able to do cool sports like judo and saber fencing. I would just have to tough out high school a little longer. It sucked finally being a senior, but still being treated like a freshman. And next year I would be a freshman all over again at community college.

I critically examined the gloomy dude in the mirror. Not a bad-looking guy; he looked a bit like a young John Cusack. Unfortunately, the problem was I seemed to be stuck in permanent boy mode, like Michael J. Fox. Was I doomed to age as a Peter Pan man-boy until I finally morphed straight into some ancient leprechaun without ever achieving a respectable grownup adult he-man stage at all?

I finally padded off to the showers to wash up in solitude. Under the forgiving spray of water I was busy drowning my thoughts, so I only half-noticed what might have been a siren going off in the distance somewhere, and yet another typically unintelligible announcement over the school P.A. system shortly after that. But I remained oblivious to 281

it all until I heard the clanging, echoing sounds of movement in the locker room—I wasn’t alone in the locker room after all. I wiped the soap from my eyes to see who it was. A knot of dark shapes drew closer, approaching me with unmistakable deliberation.

I felt a queasy knot of fear tighten up in my gut. They were coming to get me.

There were six of them, sauntering up like a pack of wolves. It was Todd Brookshire and his entourage of thuggy jocks. They were only wearing towels wrapped around their waists, but somehow that made them even more intimidating, as if they were Roman gladiators or a rogue gang of disgruntled Chippendales dancers. Todd stepped closer and twisted his mouth into an unfriendly smile. “McGowan, you little shitwipe, you totally fucked up my chances with Dee Dee.”
What the hell?
I thought. On what planet did that make any kind of sense?

I was in trouble. My guts twisted again and my heart started beating so loud I was sure they could hear it too. Quick as a rattlesnake, Todd snatched my towel off the wall and began coiling it into a rat’s tail. Then he whipped the towel around my waist and caught the ends tight. I was sopping wet, totally naked and completely trapped. He got right in my face and pulled me up close into him, tight against his body, with only his shabby little gym towel separating our groins. Crap! I was so screwed. It felt like his mad dog eyes were burrowing clear into my skull. “I should fuckin’ fuck your ass up, but you’d probably enjoy that, wouldn’t you, you fucking little fuckwad fagtard? Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?”

The dull, thumping pain in my chest was real and palpable and roaring in my ears.

Then with one last boom, it stopped—and I realized that it wasn’t just my terrified heartbeat. I actually
had
been hearing a very real, very loud pounding echoing through 282

the locker room. I suddenly felt myself leave my body. My awareness left the poor naked bastard below getting abused by the gang of closet-case Neanderthals and instead focused on the new sounds getting louder: fleshy, shambling, footfalls underscored by a long, drawn-out death-rattle groan. “Guys?” I said, snapping back into myself. “Guys?

Something’s wrong. Can’t you hear that?” Todd’s beetle brow wrinkled in irritated confusion. His backup dancers simply snickered at such a pathetic attempt to escape their clutches.

It was then I caught my first glimpse of the newcomers—the water polo team, fresh from the pool, dripping wet and reeking of chlorine. They wore only their swim caps, goggles, Speedos, and fresh bite marks, still torn and bleeding. Their mouths lolled and their hands were outstretched urgently, as if pleading for help. “Todd!” I screamed in his thick fat face. “Turn around, you moron! They’re right on us!” And he did—too late.

His five henchmen went down instantly, suddenly shrieking in fear like little girls as their predators took them. Their screams were incredible, echoing horribly off the tile floor and walls. Todd let me go but before he could even turn to look, they were on us.

Two big former aqua-jocks tackled him to the unyielding floor. He hit it hard, with a sickening crunch. The biggest of his assailants lunged down and took a huge bite out of the center of his face, then another, trying to dig its way with its teeth to his soft brains below. Then another zombie tackled me to the ground, too.

He had me undead to rights, but my soapy and drenched buck-nekkid ass popped right out his grasp like a watermelon seed. I slid around like a fish on the slick wet tile floor, scrambling to get away while he clawed at my torso and legs, trying to reel me 283

back towards his snapping jaws. Somehow my crazy flailing managed to give me just enough space to kick away from him and sail across the floor of the showers like I was cavorting on a slip-’n-slide. I sprang to my feet and ran for it, hurdling right over one of Todd’s screaming, thrashing buddies and making a beeline for the exit. In hindsight, I think my would-be pursuer must have joined in on eating the fallen bully, but I sure as hell didn’t turn around to look—in two seconds flat I was out the door.

I all but crashed into a squad of cheerleaders. They squealed “Omigod!” to each other in wide-eyed titillated shock and pointed at me as I skidded to a halt. As they cackled like perky were-hyenas, I was struck by déjà vu. I had been in this nightmare before, standing in nothing but my underwear at school with everyone staring and laughing at me. Naked, dripping wet, and chased by hungry zombies into a pack of tittering sex objects was a new wrinkle for me. But the Freudian analysis would have to wait. Even while I stood there catching my breath in a daze, screams started echoing down the halls. The cheerleaders looked around, startled, then the hordes came around the corner, pouring into the corridor from both ends. There were dozens of them, everyone from the cool and popular to the misfits and rejects: jocks and geeks, teachers, librarians and lunch ladies, band dorks and goths, bathroom smokers and Bible-toters, all horrific, bloodied, and corpse-eyed. They howled for our blood as they spotted us.

My protective ring of cheerleaders screamed and clung to each other for dear life; a bad survival strategy, as it turned out. In no time the dead swarm shambled up and then the zombie tide crashed in from all sides. Blood-splattered pom-poms went flying. I did the only thing a wet, naked young person could do under the circumstances. I ran back into the locker room.

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Okay, granted, it wasn’t the most well thought-out plan, but I desperately hoped the water polo team would still be occupied with crunching into the twitching, gurgling, still whimpering remnants of Todd and the Toddettes. They were, but it didn’t help me any, since I immediately collided into massive Coach Murdock. His head hung at weird angle, since somebody had bitten off half his neck. The giant snatched me up like I was a burrito and tried to stuff me in his mouth. I screamed louder than the cheerleaders had and started to thrash crazily, trying to keep those huge chompers at bay.

I squirmed and twisted in his arms, and got my leg up enough to stick it into his ragged neck. I straightened my leg as best I could, gritting my teeth as I strained against him. But Coach’s grip remained ironclad, and I could feel my fragile rib cage about to pop in his hands. I struggled just to breathe; anvil sparks from the hammering pain inside my skull flew around obscuring my vision, then with a awful, squishy, ripping sound, my foot went right through what was left of Coach’s neck. His head popped off and skittered bloodily across the floor somewhere. A full second later, his abandoned body and I came crashing down to the concrete.

Owwww…I got to my feet, wobbling a little, and shook my head. My ears were ringing, but I knew I had to keep moving. Why zombies weren’t already crashing through the locker room door after me I had no idea, but that was fine by me. I guess the cheerleaders were ample distraction after all. I grabbed the key ring off Coach’s belt and sprinted pass the rows of lockers towards his office; in my peripheral vision the H2O

zombie team was still busy with lunch, though a few were already stumbling around looking for more. Quickly I let myself into the equipment room, locked the door and ran 285

over to the big window across the room where they dispensed the towels. I was staring a few of them in the face as I slammed down the metal roll-top curtain and latched it, too.

Leaning against it, I slowly slid down to the floor, let out a long sigh and sat there a few moments, catching my breath and trying to process the events of the last two and a half minutes. Clearly, the Zombie Apocalypse was here. I felt strangely calm and accepting of this turn of events. The problem with most zombie movies is that the people in them have apparently never seen a zombie movie. But I, my friends, am a geek and proud, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of zombie flicks. High school was a nightmare, but this? This, I could deal with.