Zomburbia Read online

We moored the boat and got out. There was always this awkward moment when Willie and I parted where I thought he was going to go in for a hug. That day he settled for chucking me on the shoulder—for real!—and then we went to our classes on opposite sides of the school.

  I sleepwalked my way through Homeroom and AP English. At one point Mrs. Hamburger called on me and asked if I did the reading because I wasn’t joining the discussion. I controlled myself and did not roll my eyes. Of course I did the reading. I just didn’t feel much like talking. I kept thinking about that professor from last night, and Willie that morning running over that UD. I also felt like there was something else, like a dream I couldn’t remember. Does that ever happen to you? You wake up feeling bad—scared maybe, or angry, and you know you had a bad dream, but you can’t remember it.

  Things picked up in Health and Hygiene. Mostly that’s because it was the only class I had with Sherri and she kept up a steady stream of derisive comments about everything Mr. Souza told us. H&H was really just a nice name for the class they teach us every year about how to identify zombies and make sure we don’t get infected. Basically the second part all boils down to not being bitten or scratched by one. The virus, whatever else it might be, is wicked communicable. Doctors have seen it transmitted in scratches that don’t even draw blood. Thank God it’s not airborne, you know? The government forces the school to teach the class to us every year. Really, there’s a limited amount of information on all of this so they tend to review the same stuff over and over again. And again. Maybe it worked, though, because I heard that cases of zombie-ism were down lately. Maybe it was clearing up altogether and we’d be able to move back into the cities. That’d be nice. Living in the suburbs was just killing me.

  The only cool thing about suburbs before the undead popped up is that you could visit the city any time you wanted to. But now all the cities have been abandoned to the shufflers and the military keeps those of us with pulses out. Mostly, anyway. It was like the worst of both worlds.

  Sherri started calling where we live Zomburbia, and that sounds just about right. Lately, she says the whole world feels like Zomburbia. “Every city that ever mattered is closed ’cause of the shufflers,” she said, “so now the whole world lives in the freaking suburbs.”

  We made it through Mr. Souza’s endless drone and headed out into the halls along with everyone else in the school. We used the ten minutes between classes to stand there confirming our plans.

  “See you at lunch?” Sherri asked. “The tables behind the school, over by Cancer Corner?”

  “Sounds good,” I said. It should have sounded good; it’s been the plan every day since we started high school.

  We were just about to break up and go our separate ways when there was a big commotion down the hall. Naturally, we headed that way to see what was what.

  A crowd gathered in the middle of the main hall, and everyone had carved out a space in the center to watch a couple of jocktoids pushing around a Goth kid. I didn’t know the jocks’ names. The Goth kid was named Chris. He and I used to be friends back in grade school. We drifted apart around the time he bought a floor-length leather duster.

  Life wasn’t too easy for the darkwave kids. Regular folks were touchy about the whole undead thing, and wearing white fright makeup wasn’t exactly endearing. I had to admit that as antisocial as I tried to be, they made me uncomfortable, too. Still, I didn’t condone beating them up.

  Apparently the jocks did not have the same generous outlook as me. They gleefully took turns slamming Chris up against some lockers. No one stepped in to help. Not even other Goths. They have a pretty strict code that basically boils down to, “You’re on your own.” I’ve never met a Goth who didn’t delight in showing you the scars they’d received just because they were enamored with the undead. For instance, I could see the unofficial head of the group, their Dark Prince—a kid I’d known all my life as Ray Simmons, but who now probably went by the name Reginald Bloodsbane—standing in the back of the crowd watching the whole thing without emotion. He sported a huge neck brace that disappeared under his floor-length black coat.

  I don’t even remember what the juicers said as they bounced the kid around—I’m sure it was your standard “You’re different from us and so worthy of our scorn and derision, not to mention our thinly veiled homoerotic aggression.”

  A security guard watched the melee, his shotgun slung over his shoulder, the visor of his helmet raised for a better view. He seemed to be enjoying the show. Popular rumor around the schools was that the folks patrolling our halls all wanted to be prison guards but couldn’t pass the Psych exam.

  After Chris’s head bounced off the locker for the third time, I heard a man’s voice booming down the hall.

  “Move it, people!” he shouted. “Pretend you’re at a sale at Hot Topic!”

  Mr. Santori, who is a moving five-and-a-half-foot-tall wall of muscle and anger, plowed through the group of kids. He didn’t seem to mind that he actually knocked over at least one guy.

  The two jocks stopped using Chris as a human punching bag and tried to straighten his torn clothes. For his part, Chris just stood, embarrassed.

  “Jock A” opened his mouth to start defending himself, but Mr. Santori cut him off with a quick hand gesture.

  “Shut your pie-hole, Mitchell!” he said, and even I cringed. “And if you’re smart, you’ll keep it shut until we get to Principal Ibrahim’s office.”

  Then I remembered—Kim Mitchell. He was probably overcompensating for the fact that his parents gave him a girl’s name. Either that or he was currying favor with the upper echelons of the varsity elite since he was a junior and only on the JV football team.

  “Are you okay, Chris?” Mr. Santori asked. Chris sort of shrugged. He tried to play it cool—a feat that would have been easier if blood wasn’t leaking out of his nose and covering his top lip.

  “Okay,” the teacher said. “Regardless, you’re going to have to come along to Ms. Ibrahim’s, too.”

  Mr. Santori turned his gaze on the ranks of us gathered around.

  “I think you all have classes to get to,” he said.

  We all kind of evaporated like smoke.

  As Sherri and I walked away, I heard Mr. Santori’s voice again.

  “And you,” he said. “What the hell do we pay you to guard, exactly?”

  He said this to the guard, who now had his face shield down and his shotgun in his hands, I might add. Mr. Santori didn’t seem intimidated at all. Not even by the fact that the guard was like a half-foot taller and kind of towered over him.

  “Far as I could tell,” the guard said through the face mask, “all of those kids had a pulse.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Mr. Santori said. “Just . . . lovely.” He studied the dude’s badge. “I’ll be talking to my principal about you, Officer Daniels. We’ll see how long your pulse holds out.”

  He started to turn, and I hightailed it out of there before he caught me lollygagging.

  Sherri waited for me by our lockers again. Even though the bell had rung, a ton of people still milled around talking about what they’d seen, so we felt safe in our truancy.

  “Mr. Santori is a badass,” Sherri said. “Did you see him stare down the guy with the assault rifle?”

  “I totally get dibs on him for my side in the coming zombie apocalypse,” I said. “And it’s not an assault rifle, it’s a shotgun.”

  “Because that’s important right now,” Sherri said.

  “It’s important to be precise,” I said with a straight face.

  “It’s important for you to smooch my pucker.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “That’s an image that’s gonna stay with me. Unfortunately.”

  “Yeah,” Sherri said, “I guess I’d better get to Home Ec. Those cookies aren’t going to bake themselves.”

  “See you at lunch,” I said.

  Sherri walked off, careful to avoid a pod of popular girls who were also rushing to class.

&
nbsp; I started off down the hall in the other direction, then stopped. There was a big spot of Chris’s bright red blood on the white tile floor. I stared at it until the final bell rang, then I ran to class.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Very Diesel Indeed

  Later that day, a group of us—me, Sherri, Willie, and a few others—sat eating our lunches in the commons area near the school’s designated smoking zone, Cancer Corner.

  We weren’t talking about anything really important, just shooting the breeze. Sometimes we seem to really think we’re like junior Oscar Wildes or something. However, actually recalling our conversations makes me cringe.

  Case in point: Brandi Edwards looked down at her tray of industrial-strength goop, what passed for lunch in our school district, and said, “Sometimes I really envy you guys.”

  There was a moment of silence before I bit. “How’s that, Brandi?”

  “If I was a welfare case, I’d have a sack lunch, too, and not this crap,” she said. She stirred her food and pouted.

  “That’s funny,” said Sherri, a bright smile on her face. “Not as funny as the alignment of your bottom teeth, but still . . .”

  Brandi isn’t that bad—and she certainly isn’t ugly—but in our group, any complimentary statements are seen as highly suspect. Sometimes it feels like being mean to each other is a kind of sport. I mentioned it once at a party and I thought I was going to be run out of town on a rail. A huge, sarcastic rail. For weeks I kept finding travel-size tissues in my bag and in my locker, and people kept offering me a hankie. “You look like you’re about to squirt a few, Courtney, do you need this?”

  Like I said before, we’re all the most hilarious.

  “I have a new piece of business to bring up with the group,” Sherri said. She waved her fork around like a drunken judge might wave her gavel. Everyone looked up at her, expectant. “It seems that our little Courtney has attracted the attention of one of the men-folk ’round these parts.”

  Oh, Jesus. I groaned and hid my face in my hands. I really did not need this to become common knowledge.

  “Who is it?” asked Brandi.

  “A member of the jocktocracy,” Sherri answered, dragging it out. “Yes, Courtney has managed to catch the eye of a member of the date-rape set.”

  “Again,” said Brandi, “I ask: who is it?”

  Sherri could hear the encroaching boredom in Brandi’s voice just as well as I could. If she didn’t stop playing it out, she’d lose her audience.

  “Brandon Ikaros,” she said.

  There were a lot of murmurs and guffaws. I did my best to tune it out. Seriously, I could give a shit what those people thought about something that Sherri just made up anyway. Then one voice cut through the clamor of chimpanzee chatter.

  “I know Brandon,” the voice said. “He’s a good guy.”

  The ensuing silence was almost a physical presence. I looked up from my hands to see who had made such a grave breach of bitchy etiquette. Elsa Roberts met my gaze, a half-smile on her lips. I liked Elsa. As much as I liked anyone I hung out with, anyway. She’s kind of quiet and more than a little frumpy. She’s also the most consistently positive of all of us. Why she hangs out with us is sort of a mystery, actually.

  “He lives in the same neighborhood as me,” she went on as everyone gawked at her. “And he’s helped me out with my Calculus homework.”

  Calculus and not Trigonometry, I caught myself thinking. Jesus, I could be a real bitch.

  Sherri glared at Elsa and went on in an icy voice, “Thank you for a dissenting opinion, Elsa.”

  “No,” Brandi interrupted, “Brandon is pretty nice. Even for a jock.” She looked me up and down. “You could certainly do a lot worse.”

  “Thank you, Brandi,” I said.

  Sherri could tell she’d lost control of this talking point, and she needed to steer the conversation somewhere else or it might fall on some shortcoming of hers.

  “Well,” she said, “that might be true,” her gaze shifted to Willie, “but I know someone who isn’t so happy that Courtney’s got herself a fella!”

  The pack rode that wave for a good half-hour before everyone started drifting away to classes. I felt bad for Willie, bad enough that I only made a couple of jabs—and not even my best ones!

  Sherri was the last to go and she asked if I was going to stay. That was the plan, and I told her so. We had a substitute for AP History, so I planned to skip and work on my assignment for Journalism class later in the day. She left and I sat there wondering how I’d fill the blank piece of paper that sat in front of me.

  It felt like someone was watching me, but the only kids out there besides me were the Goths smoking over in Cancer Corner. I shook my head. Again I wondered why the Goths thought it was worth all the crap they took just so they could wear lots of pancake makeup and black clothes. I know I liked to play at being an outsider, but those kids took it to a whole other level. They carried their battle scars with pride. I saw Ray Simmons standing there among a small clutch of black-clad Lolitas. They must have thought his neck brace was sexy as hell. He got the brace after some drunk guys in town took a disliking to his pale skin and dark eye makeup. The fact that he didn’t pee all over himself and stood up to them hadn’t helped. At least that’s the way he told the story.

  Anyway, the Goths only had eyes for each other.

  I went back to my paper and tried to ignore the feeling of being watched. Every few seconds I’d scan the school yard. I checked the guard towers, too. Sometimes you’ll catch a guard perving and watching you through the scope of his rifle. It’s creepy on a few different levels. Despite how much I liked to think ill of the guards, they were all doing their jobs that day.

  Finally, I looked out at the fence that surrounds the school. For the most part, it’s a double fence: one that completely surrounds the campus and one about six feet beyond that should also surround us. They ran out of money while they were building it, and none of our city’s lovely taxpayers wanted to pony up the dough to complete it. Because, you know, we were their children and it was just our lives at stake. Along the back of the school there’s a section about fifty feet long where it’s just a single layer of fencing. The two open ends were closed off to prevent any shufflers from getting in. They could still theoretically get right up next to the school yard, though.

  Some movement out along the tree line caught my eye. I looked deeper into the woods, trying to see what was out there. A patch of shadows removed itself from another patch of shadows, and the zombie came into view. He was a skinny blond kid, or at least he had been. I felt myself blush when I realized he was naked below the waist. Then I felt stupid when I noticed everything that might make me blush had been eaten away. His top half looked pretty complete. He wore a pink polo shirt with a popped collar. A preppie zombie. It seemed redundant to call him that.

  He swayed back and forth gently, as if he was underwater and the current was pushing him back and forth.

  After a moment I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I let the air out of my lungs. It sounded too loud for some reason. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He wasn’t the first zombie I’d seen, not by a long shot. I’d seen plenty, and a couple a whole lot closer, but there was just something about him. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe that stupid talk show from the night before had affected me more than I wanted to admit.

  I waited for him to either move closer to the fence and get zapped by the guards in the towers, or else disappear back into the trees. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have sworn he was looking back at me. But I don’t think that could be right. If he had seen me, or sensed me, or whatever the hell it is zombies do, he’d have charged the fence and tried to get at me.

  I was suddenly filled with the urge to get up and approach the fence myself. I wanted to force him to do something, not to just stand there like a dummy. I was just rising from the bench when a hand clamped down on my shoulder. A tiny shriek escaped from my throat, and I recoiled back on
to the bench.

  I looked up at Astrid Milne, who stood over me giving me this weird half-smile.

  “Hey, are you okay?” she asked.

  I busied myself with arranging my papers, papers that I still hadn’t touched. I glanced at the trees. The kid was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone?

  Astrid still had that weird half-smile. She seemed unsure if I was safe or certifiable. Astrid was a senior, a year older than me, and she used to be sort of pretty. Maybe a little plump, but pretty. The girl who stood over me now was no longer either of those things. She was rail thin, her eyes bloodshot. Acne bloomed all over her face. She flashed that smile at me again and exposed gray teeth. They looked dead. What the hell happened to her?

  The prep zombie was no longer out by the trees. Had I imagined him? I returned Astrid’s smile. I’m sure it looked fake.

  “I’m fine, Astrid,” I said. “What’s up?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder, making sure no one could hear her. For some reason this made me feel uneasy. “I heard you might be holding some Z,” she said. For a second I thought I was going to be sick.

  Of course that’s what it was. It totally explained how this plump, pretty girl had become a skinny, blown-out skank.

  That wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that she had approached me at school to ask if I was selling. If she knew, or suspected, who else knew? My mind spun at a million miles an hour, trying to think this through. Any way I sliced it, I was dicked.

  “I don’t know what you mean, Astrid,” I said slowly.

  “Hey, listen,” she started to say, a pleading tone creeping into her voice, “I just heard that I could maybe—”

  I cut her off. “No, you need to listen,” I said. “I don’t know who you heard that from, though I’d be very interested to find that out, but I don’t sell drugs. Even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t sell them on school grounds.”

  Tears welled up in her bloodshot eyes. “C’mon . . .” she said. This time the pleading tone didn’t just creep in, it danced out front and center.