Free Zombie High by Shawn Kass Page A

of receiving no
answer, you return to your quest, heading for the shop
class, hoping that if Miss Gail is in her office that she is
okay in there, but you’re unwilling to try to break your
way in.
    Turning left at the end of the hall, you find the
double doors leading into the shop class. The doors have
crash bars on both sides and a double hinge allowing you
to easily push your way through from either side in case
you’re carrying supplies or a finished project and don’t
have a free hand. Entering, you find every tool and
machine you can think of for cutting, shaping, and
finishing wood. Band saws, table saws, sanders, wood
lathes, and more are positioned around the room at
different work stations, and a workbench runs along the
far wall with hammers, screwdrivers, and various power
tools all hanging off a pegboard, each with their own
outline drawn in black Sharpie.
    On the side of the room, closest to the door you
came in, you see shelves of scrap wood ranging from twoby-fours to plywood. The only question is, what are you
going to do with it all?
    If you turn on the machines to build something, turn to
page ……………….
93
If you just want to take two-by-fours and leave, turn to
page ……………….
96
Turning on the Machines
    Deciding that you want to build something truly
awesome to destroy zombies with, you grab a couple of
pieces of wood and flip on the band saw. Initially your
idea is to build some sort of crossbow - like device which
shoots wooden bolts out at the zombies. You don’t plan
on making the bolts perfect, the way you figure it, is that
they just have to fly out and stick into the zombie’s brain
like that one guy in the walking zombie TV show.
Estimating the bolts to be about a foot long or so, you
begin cutting the wood. You are already planning how
you are going to use the sander to grind the ends of the
pieces into points when the first zombie shuffles its way
through the door.
    At first, you see just the one, and while scary and
gruesome looking, you have no doubt that you will be
able to dispatch him quickly using the hammer off the
pegboard. Approaching it, you try to figure out which end
would be better to use, the flat side used for hammering
nails or the claw end with the rounded hooks on it used
for removing nails. Deciding to use the claw end, you lift
the hammer overhead and bring it smashing down into
the zombie’s skull where it sticks. The zombie crumbles to
the floor as if you’ve thrown a switch turning him off,
taking the hammer with it.
    For a brief second, you are ecstatic. You’ve just
defeated a zombie, one of the undead, and you want to
celebrate. That’s when the door opens again, and you see
the fifteen to twenty other zombies making their way in.
Looking back, you realize your critical mistake. The loud
sound of the machine being on must have attracted their
attention, and you never got a chance to finish your
ultimate weapon.
    Your eyes travel to the wood on the shelves, but
there is no way you can get there without going through
the incoming monsters. Your only option is to try to fight
them off using the tools on the pegboard, but somewhere
deep inside you already know there’s no way a few
screwdrivers and hammers are going to give you the space
you would need to fight them all as they surround you,
and the power tools, with their cords are wrapped up, will
require an outlet which means you’ll be leashed to one
spot on the wall while fighting them.
    Running for the tools, you know you’ll lose, but you
plan to take as many of those dirty creatures with you as
you can.
The End
Take the Two-by-Fours
    Realizing that you don’t want to attract attention
to yourself by turning on a bunch of noisy machines and
that while having nails and screws sticking out of a plank
of wood might cause more damage they would also, more
than likely, just get stuck in a zombie’s skull meaning the
weapon would be lost, you opt to just