The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell (12 page)

“And then I can go home?”

Elaine Oldenburg was becoming increasingly sure that none of them were going to be leaving the campus ever again. No matter what she did, it wasn't going to be enough, and they were all going to die. That didn't stop her from nodding firmly as she said, “Yes. Then you can go home. But you have to move, Brian. You, too, Scott. We can't stay here any longer. It's time for us to go.”

The two boys were silent for a moment, making her wonder if she was going to need to put hands on them and physically make them move. If it came to that, she wasn't sure she
could
put her hands on Scott. He had been a walking biohazard not very long before. He might still be infectious, on some level. Even if she was growing convinced that none of them were going to walk away, she wasn't quite prepared for suicide. But could she bring herself to leave him behind, if it came to that?

Then, slowly, Scott came out of his curl. “Okay,” he said, and slid off the shelf. Brian followed.

Elaine heaved a sigh of relief and straightened, preparing for her own climb up the shelf and into the roof. Maybe she couldn't save them all. Maybe she couldn't save any of them. But she could damn well keep on trying.

The tiles had, thus far, continued to hold, although they creaked alarmingly if the students held still for too long. Miss Oldenburg continued to ease her charges along, murmuring words of encouragement and cajoling when necessary. Several of the younger children were crying, and had been since they realized that they weren't going back to their classroom. Since none of them had yet progressed to full-on bawling, she hadn't been forced to find a way to make them stop. If they really started wailing…

Well, that was a problem she would deal with when it presented itself, and not a second more. Borrowing trouble seemed like a bad idea when they already had so much of it readily at hand.

They were moving toward the side of the school, at least if her vague idea of how the ceiling divisions matched up to the halls and classrooms below could be trusted. They had been forced to stop twice now by screaming from below, marking an ongoing—and ultimately futile—battle between the infected and their prey. Each time, the screaming had stopped, replaced by low, unsteady moaning. Each time, she had commanded the students with quick, unyielding gestures to be still and keep silent. They had seen enough news programs about the infected to know what those moans meant, and had frozen like so many scared rabbits until the sounds faded and Miss Oldenburg had started coaxing them forward again.

It had been a little harder to get the group moving each time. She wasn't sure how long she could keep them under control—but then again, maybe she wouldn't have to do it for much longer. If they reached the wall, they would reach the air filtration shaft. She remembered Guy pointing it out so proudly, like he'd been the one to design the school and install the big air pipe.

“It's technically a weakness, on account of how it connects to the school roof without any bars or electrical fencing or whatever,” he'd said. “But zombies can't climb, and we don't have any dead people crawling around the attic. It's safe as houses. If there was ever an outbreak on the property, this is where I'd go. Right here. This is what would get me out.”

As she crawled along, she wondered belatedly whether he'd already been thinking of this very scenario, and had been trying to give her a way out in case it ever came to pass. He was a smart man, and he'd always liked her. Maybe he was somewhere up here in the roof with them, crawling along, heading for his own salvation. That thought lead to another, more unnerving one: He'd said that there were no dead people crawling around in the attic, but that didn't mean there was no one who'd been bitten and not yet amplified. Someone who was already infected could be lurking just around the next corner, waiting to lunge.

A small hand caught her sleeve. Elaine nearly screamed, stopping herself and swallowing the sound at the last moment. She turned to see a little boy from Ms. Teeter's class tugging on her dress, a solemn expression on his face.

“Yes?” she said, keeping her voice low.

“I need to go,” he said.

That simple, mundane admission sparked a chorus of similar statements from all sides. Elaine winced. “We can't stop at the bathroom right now, honey,” she said. “Can't you hold it just a little longer?”

The boy shook his head.

Elaine grimaced as she cast a panicked look around the crawl space. If any part of it was being used for storage, that part wasn't currently lit; the light only extended for five or so feet past the leading edge of the children, and the motion sensors were sensitive enough that the lights had already turned off again behind them. That was good—the motion sensors being sensitive meant that it was less likely that anyone could be up there with the class—but it was also bad. If there were buckets or boxes or other helpful, containerlike objects up in the roof, she wasn't going to be able to find them in time.

“All right,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “Do you need to go number one or number two?”

Cheeks burning with the sheer mortification of discussing such a thing with an adult who was neither his mother nor his teacher, the boy said, “Number one.”

“That's good. All right. I know this…I know this isn't the usual way, but I want you to go over there”—she gestured toward the nearest low divider, some ten feet of crawl space away—“and pee on the floor.”

The boy looked horrified, as did the other children close enough to have heard her terrible proposal. “I can't do that!” he said. “That's
dirty
. I can't.”

“Then you'll have to hold it,” she said firmly. “We can't go down to the bathroom right now. There are…” She stopped herself before she could tell him exactly what was in the school that prevented their descent. Many of the children probably knew. Those same children were clearly repressing the information, choosing temporary ignorance over the strain of knowing. She wished she could do the same. “We have to keep playing this game until we win. You want to win, don't you?”

Looking puzzled, the little boy nodded.

“Then if you have to go, you have to go up here in the roof. I'm sorry. It's the way things are right now.” It was a terrible excuse. She knew it, and so did the children, who looked at her with mingled expressions of doubt and confusion, like they couldn't believe that those words were actually leaving her mouth. But she stood by them. She had to. There wasn't any other choice.

Finally, still looking confused—and like he might start to cry at any moment—the little boy crawled off to the place she had indicated to take care of his business. Elaine rubbed her forehead with one hand, allowing herself to close her eyes and take a few quick, stabilizing breaths. This was all so much harder than she had ever imagined it could be.

Then again, she hadn't had any idea, when her day began, that she would be dealing with an on-campus outbreak before the day was done. If she'd known, she would have called in sick, or at least worn trousers. At least being above the classrooms meant that the alarm wasn't as loud. At least most of her students were still alive.

At least zombies couldn't climb.

More than a minute slithered by before a hand tugged on her sleeve. She opened her eyes and turned to see the little boy from before kneeling next to her. His cheeks were so red that she worried briefly that he was going to pass out. “I couldn't wash my hands,” he said miserably.

“It's all right,” she assured him. “Once we finish the game, we're all going to get a nice hot bath.” The CDC would scrub them so clean that one little tinkle without soap and water at the end would seem like nothing. All they had to do was get there.

Raising her voice just a little—just enough that it would carry—she said, “All right, everyone. We need to move.” She crawled forward, trying to spur them into action.

The ceiling gave way beneath her.

It wasn't an immediate thing. It might have been better if it had been. A quick drop would have slammed her into the classroom floor below, and might have meant that less of the ceiling would have caved in along with her. She would never know what had weakened the tiles at that precise point. Maybe it was the long hesitation of the group putting slow but constant stress on them. Maybe it was old water damage weakening the connection between the individual tiles and the thin frame that had been designed to hold them in place. Whatever the reason, the ceiling first lurched, sinking down, and then—before she could do more than catch her breath and try to wish away what was about to happen—collapsed completely.

Elaine Oldenburg fell. Roughly two-thirds of the students in her care fell with her, and like the tiles, they tumbled gradually. Some were on the piece of ceiling that collapsed, and they plummeted down at the same time as she did, pinwheeling in a cloud of tile fragments and broken supports. Others managed to grab the edges of the hole her fall had created, only to fall a few seconds later as their underdeveloped upper bodies failed to give them the purchase that they needed. In less than thirty seconds, only four students remained in the roof: two of the kindergarteners, and Scott and Brian from Miss Oldenburg's class.

The lucky four peered through the hole in horror, looking down on an empty fourth-grade classroom. Some of the other kids had landed on desks or slammed into the floor so hard that blood was coming out of their mouths or noses. A few of them didn't seem to be breathing. And in the midst of the shattered throng sprawled Miss Oldenburg, her limbs splayed, her eyes closed.

“Miss Oldenburg?” whispered Scott. The teacher didn't respond. A few of the other kids stirred and groaned, but they were living groans, I-don't-wanna groans, not the pained exhalations of the dead. He
knew
what infected people sounded like, even if no one wanted to believe that he could know something like that. Suzy down the street's grandpa had died and come back again while her mom was babysitting for him. Scott had heard the dead old man moaning through the door. He'd never forget that sound.

“Miss Oldenburg?” he whispered again, louder. The classroom door was open. That seemed suddenly very important, and very scary. Why, if the classroom door was open, just about
anything
could come through. “You have to wake up now. Please?” One of the kindergarten babies up in the roof with him started to cry. Scott glared at her, which just made her cry harder.

She wasn't the only one. Some of the kids down on the floor were awake now, and they were almost all of them crying, rubbing at their eyes and elbows and knees while they made little gasping, sobbing sounds, like they just couldn't keep it inside anymore. The kids who weren't crying weren't moving, either. They were just lying there, and some of them were bleeding, from their ears or mouths. One kindergartener had blood soaking slowly through the left leg of his pants, turning the corduroy fabric from green to a dark, unpleasant shade of brown.

Miss Oldenburg wasn't moving. She wasn't bleeding either, so maybe it was okay, but she wasn't moving, and the classroom door was open, and this wasn't okay, this wasn't okay at
all
.

Scott's cheeks were wet. Dimly, he realized that he was crying like a little baby. For once, he didn't care. All he cared about was his teacher, lying silent and motionless on the floor below, not telling them what to do next.

“Miss Oldenburg?”