Okay so apparently you can't change Thread title's anymore... and well no one would've known, but I'm done the second part of my newest story. Here it is...
Tuesday
“Wait a second, wait a second! You’re saying that Marcus Hayes is a… zombie?”
I knew the idea was ridiculous, but I couldn’t explain it any other way.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I think.”
My friends didn’t believe me and I didn’t blame them for it. They weren’t the ones who had seen Marcus chowing down on some random person’s skin beside foot locker; I had, and frankly, if I were any of them, I wouldn’t believe me either.
“But you said that he was talking to you, thinking rationally. How can a zombie do that?”
That was a good question.
John Landers, my other closest friend, was a horror movie fanatic. To say that he had seen Night of the Living Dead over 100 times was probably an understatement. If anyone knew anything about zombies, or at least zombie theory, it was John.
“Yeah,” I responded, as I began to see where this conversation was head, “He asked me how I felt about the school being shut down.”
“So dude’s eating someone’s flesh and decides he and you should start discussing the day’s events?”
Yup, they were making me look like a fool –scratch that, I was making myself look like one. Zombies can’t talk, and they definitely can’t think rational thoughts –hell, zombies aren’t even real. I sighed.
“Look guys, you don’t have to believe me, I’m just telling you what happened.”
The room was silent. Paul and Marcy seemed to be giving each other a look of shared agreement. I knew what they were thinking. According to them, I was ‘brooding’ over the restaurant incident and looking for a way to avoid having to apologize to Paul. I decided to derail their train of thought. However, as I opened my mouth to make a half-assed apology, John cut in.
“I believe him.”
Had Marcy’s jaw not been attached to her skull, it surely would’ve hit the floor.
“Yeah I know he’s cra-what?” Paul screeched, most likely stealing the words out of Marcy’s wide open mouth.
“I think Marcus Hayes is a zombie,” John said in a tone devoid of any emotion. Even I had to widen my eyes at this situation. After rethinking everything I had just said to my friends, I was already beginning to think about which hospital had the best food, for I would be eating plenty of it in the psychiatric ward. “I’m also pretty sure I have a way to prove it,” He added, walking towards the easy chair he had laid his backpack on earlier.
John carried a backpack with him wherever he went and it was full of some of the most unexpected things. Regardless of how uneventful his day would turn out, he was a firm believer in ‘being prepared for anything’ and took pride in verbalizing this phrase as often as possible. Today out of the pack, he pulled a clipboard, a pencil and a map of some sort.
“Guys,” he started, setting his glasses higher up on his nose, “where do we see Marcus most often?”
Marcy remained dumbfounded.
“I don’t follow.”
“Just answer the question, Marcy,” John insisted, glaring at the ironically blonde haired girl through his glasses.
“At school?”
“Yes,” John answered, sounding as if he were becoming impatient, “but be more specific. Where do we see Marcus at school?”
“In the Gym,” Paul said quickly, “I still don’t see where you’re-”
“And what’s directly beneath the gym?”
I knew the answer but I felt obligated to allow Marcy another chance to look stupid and like clockwork, she spewed out a stereotypical blonde answer.
“Um… the ground?”
Paul laughed and she slapped him across the shoulder then followed the slap up with a half-witted tackle that took both of them to the ground.
“The boiler room John,” I responded, causing the two wrestlers to my right to pay attention once more, “that’s what’s beneath the gym. What does that have to do with anything though?”
A million possibilities swam through my head in the seconds of silence between my question and my friend’s answer but only one stood out from the rest. Ever since John had found out that our school had a ‘boiler room’, which didn’t actually contain any boilers at all, only a few different furnace units, a storage cabinet and a vacant room that, in his many ventures down there, he had found no apparent use for, my friend had been obsessed with the idea of people being brought down their as punishment for bad grades, ditched classes and fighting. He had even developed his punishment room theory into a few crazy stories involving a serial killer who brought children down there during the night. Paul called him on plagiarism, seeing how the story was hardly any different from the idea in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but John insisted his story was superior.
“Just a few days ago, I saw Mr. Warrens go down there,” my glassed friend started, adjusting his specs yet again, “and this morning, only minutes before the fire bell rang, as I was coming out from the bathroom, I saw him again. That’s twice in less than a week, even the janitors don’t go down there that much. He’s probably got some lab set up in the punishm-”
“Hell no man,” Paul said, cutting our friend’s fantasy short, “don’t bring up that stupid theory again, I’ve heard enough of it.”
“It’s not a theory, it’s true,” John said, raising his voice.
“Bull****.”
John lunged for Paul and caught him in the mid section, knocking him over the coffee table, sending the clipboard, pencil, and previously unidentified map which now revealed its title, a paper with the word “school” scribbled on it, to the floor.
After a few minutes of the two wrestling on the ground, I decided to break it up. As I was pulling my friends apart, Marcy spoke up.
“It could be possible Paul,” she said in a quieter-than-usual voice. Paul wasn’t exactly the kind of friend you liked disagreeing with, as John had just discovered via a bloody lip. He turned to Marcy, rage still flowing through him.
“What the hell do you mean it could be true?”
“Well, I didn’t see Mr. Warrens outside during the fire drill. That seems kind of odd, doesn’t it?”
Knowing that Marcus Hayes sits three seats behind me in history, I instantly started trying to remember if I had seen him outside as well. I hadn’t.
“Come to think of it,” I said, Paul turning his rage on me, “we didn’t see Marcus outside either, and he’s in our history class.”
Paul shook his head.
“This is ridiculous, we’re talking about zombies and mad science teachers guys, it’s just not right.”
John wiped his lip and stood up. He picked up the school map and clipboard again.
“Well, if there is a mad science teacher at our school creating zombies or whatever, there’s only one way to find out, right?”
*
The moonlit schoolyard, although only a few minutes drive down the road from my house, looked a lot different at night. I had been here a few times before with some lady friends but at those times, the creep factor of the blackened building had worked to my advantage. Tonight however, the rundown school which was built in the late 1940s gave off an eerie glow…
“That’s just the moonlight reflecting off of certain mirrors inside the classrooms you moron,” John said in a slightly annoyed tone, “and what’s with the stupid narration? You’re not one of those weirdoes who think their life is a story or something, are you?”
The comment caught me off guard, interrupting my narrative train of thought.
“I liked it,” Marcy said quietly.
“He was just trying to lighten the mood man,” Paul added, taking a few quick strides to catch up with me and John, “this isn’t exactly the best idea in the world you know. We could go to jail for this.”
“To jail,” John laughed, “Hah!”
Apparently Paul had already had enough run-ins with the police. He had been caught stealing six ring pops from a convenience store when he was seven, and again when he was nine. Both times he pleaded that they were for the love of his life, someone name Wilma Stone. Amazingly, the police bought the story. That or Paul’s parents were able to convince the police that their son was slightly mental, but either way, he was cleared of any charges. The half an hour in a jail cell must’ve really shook the guy up.
“It’s our school Paul,” I responded laughingly, “not Fort Knox. What’ll they do, give us detention?” I laughed a little as I pictured my friends and I getting busted and then having to serve detention till we were sixty. Paul threw a punch that caught me in the arm. I wound up to fire one back, causing my friend to trip and fall. Marcy laughed for the first time since we had left my house over half an hour before but quickly stopped. She was clearly freaked out, not so much about getting caught by the police as getting caught by someone, or something else. As we approached the old equipment building, some forty yards away from the school, John signaled us behind it.
“Okay shut up guys,” John interrupted, “we’re almost there.”
It was hard to take John seriously on a normal day, as he almost always wore some shirt that would put the world’s biggest nerds to shame, but tonight was exceptional. He had shown up to my house completely decked out in an official Ghostbusters uniform he had bought off EBay for Halloween last year. On top of that, his backpack was chalk full of stuff he suspected we would need for tonight, including garlic, some crosses, and a replica of a Kryptonite shard from one of the earlier Superman movies. Strapped on his, back, it may as well have been his official Proton pack. Paul Marcy and I had eventually stopped laughing, about ten minutes into the walk, but every time I looked at my ghost-busting for more than a few seconds, I started again.
“Yes, sir,” Paul said in a military sounding whisper, causing snickers from Marcy and I.
Something moving in the distance silenced everyone instantly though, and for the first time that night, I was glad John was in the driver’s seat, not I.
Pulling out a pair of binoculars from his ‘proton pack’, John took a quick peak at the moving object. He lowered the binoculars.
“Just a security guard,” he whispered raising the ocular equipment to his face again for another look. “Looks like he’s moving away,” he continued, following the dark figure as it went around the corner.
“Thank you captain obvious,” Paul whispered loudly, once again causing laughter from Marcy.
“Shut up man,” John retorted.
“Well we could clearly see the guy walking away without the nerd gear,” I added. Marcy let out a howl of laughter before covering her mouth.
“Yeah, well at least I’m-”
“Prepared for anything,” everyone chimed together.
“Ugh, let’s go,” John seethed as he led the way around the side of the rickety building toward the school.
I had an eerie feeling of being watched as made our way down the school’s south corridor toward the punishment room’s door. It may have just been the cameras that were now ‘turned off’ according to John, the paranoia that Paul kept making unavoidably apparent or maybe even the creepy noises that kept exiting Marcy’s mouth as she bit her nails behind me. I’m pretty sure it was a combination of all three factors, aside from the empty, dimly-lit school hall atmosphere. My creeping anxiety must’ve been contagious for the moment John grabbed the door labeled ‘boiler room’, everyone release a shudder in unison.
“Aww, Is Mr. Zombie creeped out,” Paul joked, poking John in the back.
“No way man,” John said quickly, even though he clearly was. I decided to put that theory to the test by making my best zombie impression. Paul and Marcy joined in and after about ten seconds, John lost it. Throwing the backpack he was sifting through across the hall he stood up abruptly.
“Alright you jackasses,” he screamed, his voice echoing down the empty hallway, “I’ve had enough of this heebie-jeebies horse****. I wasn’t the one who saw a zombified Marcus Hayes eating some dude’s brains the other day-”
“Actually John,” I cut in wearily, “It was his skin-”
“Whatever. The point is that you guys said you wanted to prove some radical idea that you’ve come up with and I seem to be the only one taking it seriously. Are we actually gonna do this or not?”
I looked at Paul and Marcy, both of whom were looking at the flooring and twiddling their thumbs. That figured. I would have to be the one to apologize to John for annoying him, even if it was his idea to come down here in the first place. Paul knew it, Marcy knew it, I knew it, and so did John. Glaring at me, a red tint from the nearby exit sign reflecting off his glasses, he was waiting for me to speak up.”
“You’re right man,” I started, suddenly feeling stupid for even thinking my friends would’ve believed my story about Marcus Hayes –Zombie boy, “we wouldn’t be in here, proving our point if it wasn’t for your genius.” I turned to my dawdling friends who were now looking at me with admiration. “We’re sorry, right guys?”
The two nodded in agreement. All that was left was for John to accept our sad attempt at an apology. He sighed.
“Fine, apology accepted. Now Paul, get me my bag.”
As John worked on picking the boiler room’s lock with what seemed like the only useful thing in his back-strapped arsenal, a lock pick, I could feel the tension between Marcy and Paul. I knew they were both itching to say something stupid. Marcy made her move.
“Uh John,” she said quietly, “It was actually your idea to come down here…”
John lost it again.
As my three good friends started wrestling in the hallway beside me, a light appeared at opposite hall and began moving closer. The light grew brighter and brighter until I couldn’t see anything.
“Good evening Parkins,” came the voice of my third period science teacher Mr. Warrens, “out for a midnight stroll?”
I somehow wasn’t surprised to see the science freak here, this late at night. What did surprise me however, was the fact that he had a gun pointed directly at me.
Tuesday
“Wait a second, wait a second! You’re saying that Marcus Hayes is a… zombie?”
I knew the idea was ridiculous, but I couldn’t explain it any other way.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I think.”
My friends didn’t believe me and I didn’t blame them for it. They weren’t the ones who had seen Marcus chowing down on some random person’s skin beside foot locker; I had, and frankly, if I were any of them, I wouldn’t believe me either.
“But you said that he was talking to you, thinking rationally. How can a zombie do that?”
That was a good question.
John Landers, my other closest friend, was a horror movie fanatic. To say that he had seen Night of the Living Dead over 100 times was probably an understatement. If anyone knew anything about zombies, or at least zombie theory, it was John.
“Yeah,” I responded, as I began to see where this conversation was head, “He asked me how I felt about the school being shut down.”
“So dude’s eating someone’s flesh and decides he and you should start discussing the day’s events?”
Yup, they were making me look like a fool –scratch that, I was making myself look like one. Zombies can’t talk, and they definitely can’t think rational thoughts –hell, zombies aren’t even real. I sighed.
“Look guys, you don’t have to believe me, I’m just telling you what happened.”
The room was silent. Paul and Marcy seemed to be giving each other a look of shared agreement. I knew what they were thinking. According to them, I was ‘brooding’ over the restaurant incident and looking for a way to avoid having to apologize to Paul. I decided to derail their train of thought. However, as I opened my mouth to make a half-assed apology, John cut in.
“I believe him.”
Had Marcy’s jaw not been attached to her skull, it surely would’ve hit the floor.
“Yeah I know he’s cra-what?” Paul screeched, most likely stealing the words out of Marcy’s wide open mouth.
“I think Marcus Hayes is a zombie,” John said in a tone devoid of any emotion. Even I had to widen my eyes at this situation. After rethinking everything I had just said to my friends, I was already beginning to think about which hospital had the best food, for I would be eating plenty of it in the psychiatric ward. “I’m also pretty sure I have a way to prove it,” He added, walking towards the easy chair he had laid his backpack on earlier.
John carried a backpack with him wherever he went and it was full of some of the most unexpected things. Regardless of how uneventful his day would turn out, he was a firm believer in ‘being prepared for anything’ and took pride in verbalizing this phrase as often as possible. Today out of the pack, he pulled a clipboard, a pencil and a map of some sort.
“Guys,” he started, setting his glasses higher up on his nose, “where do we see Marcus most often?”
Marcy remained dumbfounded.
“I don’t follow.”
“Just answer the question, Marcy,” John insisted, glaring at the ironically blonde haired girl through his glasses.
“At school?”
“Yes,” John answered, sounding as if he were becoming impatient, “but be more specific. Where do we see Marcus at school?”
“In the Gym,” Paul said quickly, “I still don’t see where you’re-”
“And what’s directly beneath the gym?”
I knew the answer but I felt obligated to allow Marcy another chance to look stupid and like clockwork, she spewed out a stereotypical blonde answer.
“Um… the ground?”
Paul laughed and she slapped him across the shoulder then followed the slap up with a half-witted tackle that took both of them to the ground.
“The boiler room John,” I responded, causing the two wrestlers to my right to pay attention once more, “that’s what’s beneath the gym. What does that have to do with anything though?”
A million possibilities swam through my head in the seconds of silence between my question and my friend’s answer but only one stood out from the rest. Ever since John had found out that our school had a ‘boiler room’, which didn’t actually contain any boilers at all, only a few different furnace units, a storage cabinet and a vacant room that, in his many ventures down there, he had found no apparent use for, my friend had been obsessed with the idea of people being brought down their as punishment for bad grades, ditched classes and fighting. He had even developed his punishment room theory into a few crazy stories involving a serial killer who brought children down there during the night. Paul called him on plagiarism, seeing how the story was hardly any different from the idea in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but John insisted his story was superior.
“Just a few days ago, I saw Mr. Warrens go down there,” my glassed friend started, adjusting his specs yet again, “and this morning, only minutes before the fire bell rang, as I was coming out from the bathroom, I saw him again. That’s twice in less than a week, even the janitors don’t go down there that much. He’s probably got some lab set up in the punishm-”
“Hell no man,” Paul said, cutting our friend’s fantasy short, “don’t bring up that stupid theory again, I’ve heard enough of it.”
“It’s not a theory, it’s true,” John said, raising his voice.
“Bull****.”
John lunged for Paul and caught him in the mid section, knocking him over the coffee table, sending the clipboard, pencil, and previously unidentified map which now revealed its title, a paper with the word “school” scribbled on it, to the floor.
After a few minutes of the two wrestling on the ground, I decided to break it up. As I was pulling my friends apart, Marcy spoke up.
“It could be possible Paul,” she said in a quieter-than-usual voice. Paul wasn’t exactly the kind of friend you liked disagreeing with, as John had just discovered via a bloody lip. He turned to Marcy, rage still flowing through him.
“What the hell do you mean it could be true?”
“Well, I didn’t see Mr. Warrens outside during the fire drill. That seems kind of odd, doesn’t it?”
Knowing that Marcus Hayes sits three seats behind me in history, I instantly started trying to remember if I had seen him outside as well. I hadn’t.
“Come to think of it,” I said, Paul turning his rage on me, “we didn’t see Marcus outside either, and he’s in our history class.”
Paul shook his head.
“This is ridiculous, we’re talking about zombies and mad science teachers guys, it’s just not right.”
John wiped his lip and stood up. He picked up the school map and clipboard again.
“Well, if there is a mad science teacher at our school creating zombies or whatever, there’s only one way to find out, right?”
*
The moonlit schoolyard, although only a few minutes drive down the road from my house, looked a lot different at night. I had been here a few times before with some lady friends but at those times, the creep factor of the blackened building had worked to my advantage. Tonight however, the rundown school which was built in the late 1940s gave off an eerie glow…
“That’s just the moonlight reflecting off of certain mirrors inside the classrooms you moron,” John said in a slightly annoyed tone, “and what’s with the stupid narration? You’re not one of those weirdoes who think their life is a story or something, are you?”
The comment caught me off guard, interrupting my narrative train of thought.
“I liked it,” Marcy said quietly.
“He was just trying to lighten the mood man,” Paul added, taking a few quick strides to catch up with me and John, “this isn’t exactly the best idea in the world you know. We could go to jail for this.”
“To jail,” John laughed, “Hah!”
Apparently Paul had already had enough run-ins with the police. He had been caught stealing six ring pops from a convenience store when he was seven, and again when he was nine. Both times he pleaded that they were for the love of his life, someone name Wilma Stone. Amazingly, the police bought the story. That or Paul’s parents were able to convince the police that their son was slightly mental, but either way, he was cleared of any charges. The half an hour in a jail cell must’ve really shook the guy up.
“It’s our school Paul,” I responded laughingly, “not Fort Knox. What’ll they do, give us detention?” I laughed a little as I pictured my friends and I getting busted and then having to serve detention till we were sixty. Paul threw a punch that caught me in the arm. I wound up to fire one back, causing my friend to trip and fall. Marcy laughed for the first time since we had left my house over half an hour before but quickly stopped. She was clearly freaked out, not so much about getting caught by the police as getting caught by someone, or something else. As we approached the old equipment building, some forty yards away from the school, John signaled us behind it.
“Okay shut up guys,” John interrupted, “we’re almost there.”
It was hard to take John seriously on a normal day, as he almost always wore some shirt that would put the world’s biggest nerds to shame, but tonight was exceptional. He had shown up to my house completely decked out in an official Ghostbusters uniform he had bought off EBay for Halloween last year. On top of that, his backpack was chalk full of stuff he suspected we would need for tonight, including garlic, some crosses, and a replica of a Kryptonite shard from one of the earlier Superman movies. Strapped on his, back, it may as well have been his official Proton pack. Paul Marcy and I had eventually stopped laughing, about ten minutes into the walk, but every time I looked at my ghost-busting for more than a few seconds, I started again.
“Yes, sir,” Paul said in a military sounding whisper, causing snickers from Marcy and I.
Something moving in the distance silenced everyone instantly though, and for the first time that night, I was glad John was in the driver’s seat, not I.
Pulling out a pair of binoculars from his ‘proton pack’, John took a quick peak at the moving object. He lowered the binoculars.
“Just a security guard,” he whispered raising the ocular equipment to his face again for another look. “Looks like he’s moving away,” he continued, following the dark figure as it went around the corner.
“Thank you captain obvious,” Paul whispered loudly, once again causing laughter from Marcy.
“Shut up man,” John retorted.
“Well we could clearly see the guy walking away without the nerd gear,” I added. Marcy let out a howl of laughter before covering her mouth.
“Yeah, well at least I’m-”
“Prepared for anything,” everyone chimed together.
“Ugh, let’s go,” John seethed as he led the way around the side of the rickety building toward the school.
I had an eerie feeling of being watched as made our way down the school’s south corridor toward the punishment room’s door. It may have just been the cameras that were now ‘turned off’ according to John, the paranoia that Paul kept making unavoidably apparent or maybe even the creepy noises that kept exiting Marcy’s mouth as she bit her nails behind me. I’m pretty sure it was a combination of all three factors, aside from the empty, dimly-lit school hall atmosphere. My creeping anxiety must’ve been contagious for the moment John grabbed the door labeled ‘boiler room’, everyone release a shudder in unison.
“Aww, Is Mr. Zombie creeped out,” Paul joked, poking John in the back.
“No way man,” John said quickly, even though he clearly was. I decided to put that theory to the test by making my best zombie impression. Paul and Marcy joined in and after about ten seconds, John lost it. Throwing the backpack he was sifting through across the hall he stood up abruptly.
“Alright you jackasses,” he screamed, his voice echoing down the empty hallway, “I’ve had enough of this heebie-jeebies horse****. I wasn’t the one who saw a zombified Marcus Hayes eating some dude’s brains the other day-”
“Actually John,” I cut in wearily, “It was his skin-”
“Whatever. The point is that you guys said you wanted to prove some radical idea that you’ve come up with and I seem to be the only one taking it seriously. Are we actually gonna do this or not?”
I looked at Paul and Marcy, both of whom were looking at the flooring and twiddling their thumbs. That figured. I would have to be the one to apologize to John for annoying him, even if it was his idea to come down here in the first place. Paul knew it, Marcy knew it, I knew it, and so did John. Glaring at me, a red tint from the nearby exit sign reflecting off his glasses, he was waiting for me to speak up.”
“You’re right man,” I started, suddenly feeling stupid for even thinking my friends would’ve believed my story about Marcus Hayes –Zombie boy, “we wouldn’t be in here, proving our point if it wasn’t for your genius.” I turned to my dawdling friends who were now looking at me with admiration. “We’re sorry, right guys?”
The two nodded in agreement. All that was left was for John to accept our sad attempt at an apology. He sighed.
“Fine, apology accepted. Now Paul, get me my bag.”
As John worked on picking the boiler room’s lock with what seemed like the only useful thing in his back-strapped arsenal, a lock pick, I could feel the tension between Marcy and Paul. I knew they were both itching to say something stupid. Marcy made her move.
“Uh John,” she said quietly, “It was actually your idea to come down here…”
John lost it again.
As my three good friends started wrestling in the hallway beside me, a light appeared at opposite hall and began moving closer. The light grew brighter and brighter until I couldn’t see anything.
“Good evening Parkins,” came the voice of my third period science teacher Mr. Warrens, “out for a midnight stroll?”
I somehow wasn’t surprised to see the science freak here, this late at night. What did surprise me however, was the fact that he had a gun pointed directly at me.
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