Dawn of the Jed by Scott Craven Page A

top of the paper was a masthead, The NZN Network. Underneath the headline was what appeared to be a “Say No to Zombies” logo. It included a drawing of a hunched-over figure in torn clothes, blood oozing from his eyes and mouth, and red-stained hands reaching toward the reader. Blood was spattered across his torso, either from the gaping wound in his chest or from the many victims who’d fallen prey to his “flesh-tearing teeth.” Stamped over the figure was a circle and slash, the international symbol for “No.”
    A smaller headline at the bottom said, “Ten ways to spot a zombie.”
    “You know what really gets me?” Anna said. “Maybe only six of these apply to you.”
    “Are you serious?” I said. “None of these apply to me. These are all myths and clichés from TV and the movies. This is ridiculous.”
    “How about number five? You DO moan sometimes, especially when you don’t get your way.”
    “There is a big difference between a moan and a whine. And I hardly ever whine.”
    “Then there’s number eight. ‘Tends to be unresponsive to outside stimulus.’ That happened just last week.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The movie theater? You went unresponsive to outside stimulus less than halfway through.”
    “I fell asleep because that movie was really boring, and we were out of popcorn. I told you I’d probably only make it as far as the snacks lasted.”
    “Definitely number two. You do wander aimlessly in search of food.”
    “That doesn’t say ‘food,’ it says ‘flesh.’ Now if it said ‘burgers,’ I would say there’s some truth in it.”
    “The one I really am not sure about is the teeth,” Anna said. “Do you brush twice daily and floss?”
    “Every now and then. But I stay away from chewy stuff. I could lose a lot of teeth that way. But apparently teeth that aren’t up to gummy bears can tear flesh pretty easily, according to these guys.”
    We laughed. It felt really good. But it didn’t erase the really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
    “You know what bothers me as much as this list?” I said. “It’s pretty obvious someone took a lot of time to do this. Look at the drawing. And it’s in color. That’s not cheap.”
    “Jed, anyone could’ve whipped this up on their computer in five minutes,” Anna said. “Hit the ‘Print’ button, and you have fifty copies just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “My guess is Robbie. The guy just can’t let go of a grudge.”
    “I don’t think so. If Robbie is one thing, it’s lazy. When he wants to take it out on me, all he needs is a trash can. Or wrestling, right in front of a teacher. He can humiliate me in less than a minute on most occasions. But this, this is energy intensive. And look, each word is spelled correctly, and the grammar is solid.”
    “You got me there. But I’m not crossing Robbie off the list just yet.”
    Anna turned the sheet over, peering closely. She held it up to her face.
    “What are you looking for?”
    “Some of the nicer paper has a watermark. Something you can only see real close, or in the light. It tells you who the maker is. If we know that, we can go online and see who around here sells it. We head to the store and ask them for a list of people who purchased it in the last month, and we take that list and cross-reference against the people who have a grudge against you. Then we visit each of them to look at their printers and match up the specific shade of ink to find our perp.”
    “Anna?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You have been watching way too much CSI .”
    “For sure.” She put down the paper. “Besides, no watermark. This is plain old cheap paper. You can get it anywhere. I’ll bet every teacher uses it.”
    I nodded. “If it’s cheap, Pine Hollow has it, guaranteed.”
    At this point, it wasn’t so much the “Who” as the “Why.” Zombies didn’t seem to be much of a problem at school, considering I made up a club of one. What good is it spreading