Zombie Kong - Anthology by TW; T. A. Wardrope Simon; Brown William; McCaffery Tonia; Meikle David Niall; Brown Wilson Page B

light and nausea uncoil itself in his belly. He hurriedly worked his way down the duct until he guessed he was over the hallway. The smoke grew thicker even in those few moments. Holding his breath, Thomas rolled off the air duct, broke through the ceiling tiles and dropped back into the lunch-line hall.
    Mr. Jablanski stood before him.
    Speak of the devil, Thomas thought.
    Mr. Jablanski had a hard time standing on his shredded right leg. The flamethrower’s gun dangled from his hand, ending in a torn hose. The man once had given Thomas purpose. Thomas appeared in Mr. Jablanski’s physics class at 10 a.m. Monday through Friday. Reading assignments and problems followed. Now the dynamic was reversed. Thomas gave Mr. Jablanski purpose. How quickly things changed. Mr. Jablanski lurched forward to take a bite. Thomas darted back and then around Mr. Jablanski’s flailing arms.
    The halls were starting to fill with smoke now. Thomas avoided three infected students and headed for the band room. It was a designated rally point. Coughing, he turned by the library and reached the goal moments later. Thomas banged on the band room door. A slot opened and a pair of eyes looked him up and down.
“Are you bit?” the owner of the eyes asked.
“No.”
“Do the drill.”
    Sweating, Thomas dropped his pants and pulled his shirt up around his neck. He turned in a circle, eyeing the Zs staggering closer, closer…
    “Okay, you’re clean.”
    The band door opened, and Thomas ducked inside. The place was packed with perhaps forty kids. Thomas quickly scanned the faces and was grateful to see Danielle sitting on the far side of the room with a group of friends.
“Anyone else coming?” Larry Berlin asked.
“No,” Thomas shook his head. “And we need to get going.”
“The rules say we wait for help.”
    “We can’t this time.” Thomas pointed at the smoke that had started to spill out of the ceiling vents. “The crawlspaces are burning. We’ll be poisoned.”
    Murmurs went up among the students.
    “But we can’t get out,” someone said querulously. “We’re in lockdown.”
    “There’s a way,” Thomas insisted. Before panic could spread roots into the group’s psyche, he explained. Once he presented his idea, everyone agreed to it.
    As a member of the Student Zmergency Council, Larry took charge and ordered the students to dismantle the room’s music stands. This left them with narrow pipes about four feet long. Besides clubbing, the weapons could stab soft things.
    “We’ll move like a circle of wagons,” Larry directed. “Everyone with a pipe will be on the outside. Unarmed people will keep to the middle. Before we go, does anyone have a gun? I know you’re supposed to check them in at the office, but I won’t report you.”
    Three boys raised their hands.
    “Save your bullets for the target,” Larry advised.
    The group exited the band room in a serpentine line that tripled up in the hall. Drills allowed them to move fast even though the smoke made it difficult to see. Many of the students had removed T-shirts and tied them around their faces. Thomas tried to stay close to Danielle. She was unarmed; he held a pipe; and they were running the gauntlet.
    Hands reached out of the smoke as Zs converged on their still-living classmates. Shouts. Moans. Flailing clubs. And screams as some were dragged into the smoke. Rebecca Meyer advanced, a pale apparition whose skin was almost invisible in the cloudiness. She snagged the shirt of the girl next to Danielle, and Thomas beat the clutching limb away. The train of them stayed in motion, to stop was to have their ranks overcome.
    The group reached the gymnasium relatively intact. The ZK still lolled on the floor with the remains of its hunger. It had tried to free its ankle of the rafter, but succeeded in doing no more than breaking it; a bone jutted out of the joint like a snapped tree limb. Gunshots rang out as the armed students went for the ZK’s eyes. Nine-millimeter