They burst through the locker room door and scurried down the rows of gym lockers and long wooden benches, which were strewn with white towels blotched with pale green slime.
Zoe glanced to her left, looking into the boys’ bathroom. “Whoa…you guys got some weird toilets.”
“Blarrgheckheckhlargle!” a zombie croaked, and they spun to the right.
An agile eighth-grade zombie jumped out from the shower room in full wrestling regalia. Its headgear was partly askew over its crown, and a nubbly bump of cauliflowered flesh bulged out from under the ear protector. Its spandex one-piece uniform was torn, revealing four parallel scrapes from a zombie clawmark. The wrestler zombie hopped and bobbed in an athletic stance while trying to lick its own ear.
“Tom?” Zoe asked, recognizing her classmate.
Zombie Tom lunged at Ozzie, grappling at his shoulders WWE style.
The zombie jockmeister reached for Ozzie’s groin, angling for a body slam, but Ozzie lifted his leg and spun. Now he had the eighth-grade freak in a half-nelson sleeper hold. “Quick,” Ozzie called to Rice. “Open the locker!” Rice flung open the metal door with a loud clank. Zack grabbed the zombie’s feet as Ozzie stuffed it inside and slammed the door.
“Good work, guys!” Zack slapped Rice and Ozzie on their shoulders.
“Hurry up, dorks!” Zoe yelled, depressing the metal push-bar at the exit. She opened the door, and they crept through the side entrance into the dark gymnasium. Zack led the way across the basketball court. The hardwood felt tacky, like the floor of a movie theater. Tipped-over refreshment tables littered the sidelines with smashed desserts and empty bowls of punch. Rice walked over to the mess and bent down. He picked up a lemon square from the floor and inspected it for a second.
“Ewww!” Zoe cried in revulsion. “He’s eating off the floor!”
Rice gobbled down the yummy goody, swallowed happily and sighed. “They only make the good desserts for the parents.”
“Rice, what are you doing?” Zack scolded. “There could’ve been zombie slime on that.”
“I don’t care, Zack,” he responded. “Those lemon things are to die for.”
“Shhhh!” Ozzie said. “Listen.”
Just then, a red ball boinged out of the shadows and rolled to a stop at Zoe’s feet. “Huh?”
A figure staggered out from underneath the bleachers and grabbed Rice by his book bag. It was their middle-aged, undead gym teacher, Mr. Ziggler, decked out in a green Adidas warm-up suit.
Rice tripped backward, crab-walking on the floor, as the zombie gym coach lurched toward him. “I’ll run laps, Mr. Z.!” Rice pleaded. “I’ll do my push-ups! Just leave me alone!”
In a flash, Zoe picked up the dodgeball and heaved it at the Ziggler zombie. The bouncy ball spronged off its head. Unfazed, Mr. Ziggler roared, reaching down and swiping at his out-of-shape pupil.
“Aaaaaah!” Rice screamed.
Zack stepped up with his bat and swung, clubbing the capture-the-flag guru to the hardwood.
Rice took a deep breath, and Zack pulled his buddy off the floor.
“Uh, guys…” Zoe pointed behind them. An army of moms and dads, teachers and staff rose out of the stands and shambled onto the gym floor.
Their art teacher, Mr. Dickens, staggered side by side with Mrs. Thomas, the eighth-grade history teacher. Mr. Dickens’s pink dress shirt was finger-painted red and black with zombie guts, like kindergarten art. Mrs. Thomas rasped, gurgled, and wheezed. Her arms waggled straight out in front of her face, sappy with purple goop.
Ozzie strode over to the pigeon-toed duo, brandishing his field hockey stick.
“Mrs T.’s about to be history,” Rice quipped.
Ozzie swung the bludgeon low, one-handed, and swept the zombie teacher’s feet right out from under it. He twirled the wooden cudgel like a baton and bopped Mrs. Thomas on the noggin. The reanimated corpse hit the floor with a crunchy double-splat.
Class dismissed.
“Run!” Ozzie ordered as the undead parents and faculty stormed the court.
Zack pulled the gym doors open, and they all stood at the top of the steps overlooking the lobby. The zombie-packed corridor resounded with wet, phlegmy moans.
“Glargle snargle rhargh!” Another wretched slew of zombie teachers gushed into the center of the lobby, hacking up goop.
“Stay here.” Zack darted quickly back into the gym. The zombies shambled down the three-second lane.
Zack grabbed the metal bars on the two basketball racks, wheeled them onto the landing, and slid the shaft of a lacrosse stick through the door handles, sealing the other zombies inside the gym. “What are those for?” Rice asked, taking a practice swing with his field hockey stick.
“Dodgeball…,” Zack said, slapping the hard leather.
“Dude, you know I hate dodgeball.”
“Don’t worry, Johnston.” Zoe picked up a ball, too. “You won’t get picked last…you’re already on the team.” She spun the basketball on one finger.
“Head shots only, guys!” Ozzie commanded, picking an And 1 rubber basketball off the rack. He launched the rock at Mr. Milovich, clobbering him in the forehead. The zombified guidance counselor dropped to the lobby floor.
“Nice shot, Oz!” Rice said, giving props, and picked up a basketball of his own. The four of them rifled ball after ball with remarkable aim, blasting the zombies in their putrid noggins.
Suddenly the evil drama teacher, Ms. Merriweather, pounced up the steps, snatching for Zack’s feet. She wore a frilly blouse, covered in dreck and slime, and weird jeans pulled up too high above her waist.
Zack grabbed another ball and gunned it at the drama zombie’s pale, withered face, blasting its temple. SPLAMMO! The zombie teacher dropped in a vile heap.
“Did we win yet?” Rice asked, panting to catch his breath. He punted the basketball like a goalkeeper, too tired to throw anymore. The ball ricocheted off the ceiling and nailed Mrs. Ledger, the fifth-grade homeroom teacher, on the top of its dome. Rice pointed at the zombie. “You’re out!”
Suddenly, another drove of zombies shambled into the lobby from a side hall, like a video game blitz. They dribbled slimy snot strings, and knots of clotted pus dripped from their every quadrant.
“We’re not winning, man!” Zack yelled.
Rice threw another lucky shot that bashed Vice Principal Liebner in the head. “Really?” He pumped his fist. “’Cuz it feels like I’m winning…”
Suddenly, a zombie hand tugged at Zack’s shoulder from the side. He wheeled around. It was Mrs. Amorosi, the head librarian, groaning and slobbering at the top of the platform. Zack ripped his arm away, and the zombie stumbled back, but then lunged for him once more. A basketball whizzed by Zack’s ear and caught the off-balance bookworm square in the face. WHAM! The she-zombie wobbled and fell backward down the stairs.
“There are too many of them!” Ozzie shouted over the ruckus.
Zack’s belly filled with panic as more and more zombies rambled into the congested hallway of the school.
“No more dodgeball.” Zoe pouted, pointing to the empty racks.
The gym doors rattled behind them. Grotesque hands and arms shot through the frosted glass windows, reaching around blindly just above their heads.
“We gotta get outta here!” Rice cried, ducking under the canopy of zombie appendages.
Zack bounded off the steps, skidding in a slick puddle of something gross. Zoe, Ozzie, and Rice raced down the stairs, ducking and dodging through a windmill of rotted arms and legs.
All of a sudden, Senora Gonzalez shoved her way past two of her zombified colleagues, groping wildly for Rice once again. She hurled herself forward, tackling him into the glass trophy case.
“¡Arrozzzzzzz!” she bleated.
“¡No me gusta! ¡Por favor!” Rice shouted.
The zombie’s teeth made a dull clank as it gnawed at his face mask.
The crazed Spanish teacher would have bitten his face off if Rice had not been wearing his helmet. Zack grabbed a soccer trophy and clubbed the zombie in the side of the head.
“You okay, man?” He pulled Rice up out of the shattered trophy case.
“Think so,” Rice said, brushing himself off as he shot Senora Gonzalez a scornful look.
“She’s really got it in for you today, huh?”
“Blaarrgh!” The Milovich zombie pulled itself off the floor and lashed out at the boys once again, but Zack hopped back and socked it with a swift swing of his bat.
“You didn’t see my parents, did you?” Rice asked.
“Not yet, buddy. Not yet.”
“Come on, guys!” Zoe shouted, waving her arm next to Ozzie in a nearby doorway.
They sprinted through the middle school–turned–zombie madhouse until they came to a vacant corridor.
Or so they thought.