Reanimated Readz by Rusty Fischer Page B

spend working really, really hard to get them back.
    You don’t cram twelve hundred students into an auditorium at the end of the day and then not get up on stage and tell jokes or toss beads into the crowd or something to keep them occupied.
    Don’t the clowns who run this school know anything about crowd control?
    “All the zombies showed,” Brody points out unnecessarily, inching a long finger into the fold of curtain and sliding it open an extra half-inch so we can both see the bad news at the same time. “That’s not good.”
    “Well, this is the first year they’ve been allowed to have a candidate,” I remind him—not that he needs it. “Of course they showed.”
    He frowns, peppering me with his minty breath. “I just thought, you know, since it always takes them so long to get to the bus, they’d let them go early like usual.”
    I nod, picturing a zombie-free gym for the debate. “That would have been nice.”
    I follow his gaze to the back half of the auditorium, top upper left. The zombies sit together, wearing their mandatory green jackets with yellow stripes down the sleeves.
    When the government passed the Reanimation Reform School Act last year, and the zombies were allowed back into school, the bill came with all these restrictions. The green jackets were one. Supposedly, it’s to help teachers spot the dead from the living. You know, as if the gray skin and yellow teeth and glazed expressions and shuffling feet weren’t enough.
    I shut the curtain and pace some more. Brody follows me, pace for pace, a head taller and with those giant cricket legs of his, slowing down to keep up.
    I hear footsteps, slow and heavy, and grunt. Brody stops at my side and says, “Be nice, Tanner.”
    “Hi, Tanner,” says Calvin, my opponent for senior class president at Hillcrest High. “Good luck.”
    He sticks out a hand, and I know I should shake it because Brody and Principal Jenner and Calvin’s campaign manager, Sylvia Hecker, are all watching me to see if I’ll take it, but I just…hate…touching them, you know?
    I look down at his hand then up at Brody, who gives me six inches of eyebrows and four shades of judgmental, then back down to Calvin’s hand.
    “Thanks,” I say, brushing fingers with him slightly to keep the icy-cold feel of his dead, gray flesh down to a minimum. “Good luck.”
    He shrugs. They do that a lot. “I don’t really need it,” he says, slowly, the way they talk. His skin is taut around his high cheekbones, his eyes not quite black, but a smidge more than gray.
    I’m about to say something snarky, even though Brody is shooting me daggers from two paces, when Calvin finally finishes his sentence. “I know I have no chance of winning against someone like you anyway, Tanner.”
    I’m still wondering if this is some kind of political trick when Sylvia steps in, clipboard in tow. What’s with campaign managers and their clipboards these days? Have they never heard of tablets?
    “Don’t be so humble, Calvin,” she smarms in her smarmy way. “You have every right to be here and, as our polling indicates, you’re neck and neck.”
    Yeah, that’s the problem. There are one hundred twenty-nine zombies attending Hillcrest High and just over a thousand humans—and I’m neck and neck with the zombie? What’s wrong with this picture?
    “I wouldn’t say neck and neck exactly, Sylvia,” Brody pipes up.
    “Me either,” Calvin agrees. “Besides,” he adds in that hoarse, halting voice of his, “it’s not so important to win.”
    We all look at him as if he’s speaking gibberish. “Well,” I can’t help blurting out, “if you don’t care about winning, then…why are you running?”
    He looks at me and smiles. I try not to wince at his yellow teeth, but it’s hard—real hard. “I just thought it would be nice to show my friends they belong.”
    Brody blinks twice and starts to practically applaud him, and I kick his shin. Sylvia brushes back her long red hair