Zombie School Lockdown is part of Grivante’s Zee Brothers series.
Office chairs and zombies filled the hallway like litter.
Jonah rushed into the room to see Judas and the girl getting up from under the desk.
“Help me grab these chairs. They’re slowing them down and creating a bottleneck.”
“You got it!” Judas said, grabbing the chair nearest him. “C’mon Nat, can you give us a hand?”
The girl’s eyes widened at that and Judas tossed her the candy from his hand. “Sure,” she smiled. “I’ll help!”
Judas and Nantucket grabbed chairs from around the room and sent them flying across the carpet to the door. Jonah took them and flung them into the tiled hallway. Within moments, they had the room empty of chairs.
Judas walked to the entrance and looked out. The zombies stood bunched in a cluster on the other side of the vending machines and behind the tangle of chairs. It made an excellent barricade, with some chairs tipped over and the crowd of undead pushing against them causing them to move as one connected mass.
Jonah held them in place by shoving against the chairs with his full weight. However, a few of the dead were crawling through the mess and one was making his way along the wall on the farside.
“Help me push them to the side and pin that one to the wall!” Jonah shouted at his brother.
Judas looked at the tangle of chairs and zombies. Seeing three of them crowded next to the side near the vending machines he said, “If we move them that way, these three will get through.”
Jonah bit his lip. “We need to figure something out!” He looked at the vending machines, saw a giant sharpened pencil in the display window, and a light went on in his head. He reached for his wallet, pulled it out and tossed it to Judas. “Here, it’s like the Mystery Box, buy some of those pencils. We can use them to take a few out as they make their way around.”
Judas smiled. “Great idea, Jonah!” He opened his brother’s wallet and pulled out two dollar bills. “Um, Jonah, you’ve only got two bucks.”
“Crap, how much are the pencils?”
“Two dollars.”
The lone zombie, a tall thin man with half of his neck ripped out and blood staining his blue cardigan sweater, rounded the barricades corner and ambled toward Jonah. “Buy it!”
Jonah looked at the zombie, then at Judas and the girl. “What’s your name?”
The girl pressed up against the wall, backpack in one hand, answered in a shaking voice. “My name’s Nantucket.”
Judas got the first dollar fed into the machine but the second one, an old wrinkly bill, kept getting spat back out. He tried flattening it by rubbing it against the corner of the vending machine.
“Nantucket, I need your help,” Jonah said, turning his attention back to the approaching corpse. “I need you to come hold these chairs. Keep pushing them back and keep them,” he indicated the throng of dead milling about on the other side of the chairs, “from getting at us.”
“I… I,” the girl stuttered and stayed frozen.
The cardigan-wearing zombie dove for Jonah, who gave the mass of chairs a hard shove and stepped out of the zombie’s reach. It stumbled passed him and he grabbed the smaller form by the biceps and held him in place.
“Judas!” Jonah shouted
“I’m trying, bro!” He held up the wrinkly bill and fed it into the machine again.
It went all the way in and for a moment looked as if it would be accepted. The machine whirred for an impossibly long instant, before spitting it back out, this time with one corner bent.
Judas cursed, removed the dollar, straightened it and fed it in again. The machine whirred for the briefest of moments and the bill disappeared. The little digital window read $2.00 and Judas shouted. “Woohoo!” He pressed button A2 and turned to Jonah. “We’re gonna need more money if we want any more weapons from this box.”
Sweat dripped from Jonah’s forehead as he wrestled to keep the zombie in front of him pinned.
The ‘thunk’ of delivery sounded from the vending machine. “Almost, Jonah!” Judas yelled as he bent and twisted his arm to get inside the plastic tray. He pulled the pencil out, prepared to rush to Jonah’s aid, then stopped. “Uh, Jonah, we got a problem. Evidently, that one is only for display. We’re gonna need a Pack-a-Punch!”
Jonah turned and looked at his brother, who held a large pencil like they’d seen in the display window, only it wasn’t sharpened. Jonah’s eyes widened as he took in the situation. They were running out of options. “Get ready to run, we’re gonna have to fall back.”
“Wait,” Nat said. “There’s a sharpener in the computer lab.” She held out her hand to Judas.
Judas grinned. “Perfect!” He handed Nat the pencil. “Get it as sharp as you can, quick!” He turned back to his brother and rushed to help him. Together they grabbed ‘blue cardigan’ by the back of his sweater and tossed him over the barricade to where the other hungering dead were massed. He made it most of the way, before landing with a smash, scattering some of the chairs and creating a ruckus amongst the zombies.
“Here, hold the chairs Judas!”
Jonah stepped back, tracking another of the zombies that was making its way around the far side, and grabbed his flip phone from his back pocket. He opened it and held down the number one button until speed dial kicked in.
“Who you calling, Jonah?”
“JJ! We’re gonna need back-up!”
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Sounds interesting.