Free All Together Now: A Zombie Story by Robert Kent

other freshmen.
    "They can't climb," Amber called down to us. "They already tried."
    She didn't have to define "they."
    The rear gymnasium doors banged open and four students staggered in, more behind them, all with white eyes, all moaning.
    "Let's go!" Ben said. He grabbed onto the bleachers and began to climb, which we never would've been allowed to do under normal circumstances.
    "No!" I said. "We'll be trapped!"
    "Hurry!" Amber screamed.
    I looked back. The zombies were already halfway across the gym. Four students had become 12. They weren't running, but their eyes were focused on us and they were walking in jerky steps as fast as their stiff legs would allow.
    Ben looked at me, considering, and then climbed back down.
    "Outside!" I pointed at the double doors with the word EXIT printed above them in green. They led out to the football field, and beyond that, the baseball diamond.
    Ben nodded and we ran.
    A dead girl lurched from the side of the bleachers, blocking our path to the exit. A flap of skin had been peeled back from above her right eye to the top of her skull. The flesh of her stomach and side from her armpit to her jeans had been ripped away. She moaned and reached for us.
    Ben gave her a wide berth, but he couldn't reach the exit door without touching her.
    The snarling behind us grew louder, closer.
    "Please move," I said.
    The girl cocked her head and stepped toward me, her lips drawing back to expose her teeth, and I knew she didn't understand. She was beyond understanding
    "Move," I said, flinching.
    I glanced back at the approaching corpses and did what I had to. I swung my bat into the girl's face as hard as I could.
    She fell over with a screeching thump on the glazed hardwood floor.
    "I'm sorry."
    The left side of her face was now mangled and bleeding where I'd struck her, but the girl started to stand again anyway.
    "I'm so sorry." My hands were trembling so badly it's a wonder I didn't drop my bat.
    "Come on!" Ben said, opening the exit doors.
    I ran around the girl without looking back.
    By the time the fire alarm sounded, we were outside, the gym doors closed behind us.
     

32
     
     
     
    JUST UNDER THE HIGH RINGING of the fire alarm was the low wailing of weather sirens in the distance. Usually these could only be heard for two minutes on Friday mornings during their weekly test or when conditions were suitable for a tornado.
    The sky above was light blue and the sun was bright.
    On the baseball diamond, a gym class was milling around, listening to the sirens. They'd been playing ball the whole time. They didn't yet know how many of their friends and teachers were either dead or ought to be.
    "What—" Ben said and stopped. He tried to speak again and choked.
    Tears dripped from the corners of his eyes and he slapped them away as though beating them out.
    I shook my head. I didn't feel like crying.
    I didn't feel anything. I was numb.
    Something disgusting bubbled up from my guts to my throat, but I swallowed it before it got past my teeth.
    It was a pleasant summer day. If not for the alarms, we might've heard birds chirping.
    Ben was wearing a Star Wars shirt. A red smear marred Yoda's forehead.
    "We should go," I said.
    Ben slapped his eyes again and nodded. "Where?"
    "I don't know. We should—" I remembered the office memo I received in third period. "What time is it?"
    "I don't know—I'm not..." Ben reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone. "11:17."
    "My dad's coming," I said. "He'll be coming to the front office, so we—"
    The metal exit doors behind us banged open and the zombies from the gym poured out into the sunshine. They batted their white eyes in the daylight, but lurched toward us without breaking stride.
    We ran.
    We raised our bats, but there was no need. We could've outpaced the zombies if we'd been walking briskly, and in no time they were too far behind us to be a threat.
    The problem with zombies is not speed. It's that they never sleep, never get tired. If not