Zombie Apocalypse 2050 - Chap. 4 - Lucy Tisdale

Holy cow, do zombies ever stink! Nobody told me how much they’d stink! Not that anybody at Valley View High knew zombies were going to come up from underneath the gym, so I guess they couldn’t’a really told me. Now that smell is going to be all in my hair, and who knows when I’ll get to shower again! I mean, like, really!

Even my gum tastes like it. Ew. I can’t spit it out, though. Counting the number of times I chew it is one of my only distractions from the smell. I’m on four-thousand-twenty-three.

It distracts me from the memory of my junior classmates at Valley View dying in pools of their own blood while their flesh was eaten off their living bones, too. Can’t forget that.

And from that other memory, the one I’m really trying not to remember.

Ew.

Four-thousand-thirty-eight.

What I really need is a way out of this cage they’ve got me in. Why do I have to be dangling fifteen feet above the floor? I guess that head zombie guy guessed I’d try to get out. Pretty hard this high up.

Does odor rise, like heat?

At least I’ve stopped vomiting. There’s nothing left in me to vomit up. I’m like, really sore, though, from the vomiting, and the three days of starvation, and the . . . other thing that happened.

Where the hell’ve they got us, anyway? A freakin’ warehouse? Where the hell’d they all go? As much as I really, really don’t want them to come back, it’d be better to get whatever they’re gonna do over with than to sit here all nervous with this smell.

Four-thousand-fifty.

Across the warehouse or whatever they’ve got another cage just like mine hanging from the ceiling. That cage isn’t moving, like mine is, as I dangle my legs through the bars and swing them. The dark lump on the bottom of that cage isn’t moving. I call across the warehouse (or whatever.)

“Emma?”

No answer. Not so much as a twitch.

“Emma . . . ? Do you have any more gum?”

I wait for a minute, thinking maybe she’ll answer. She does. She, like, sings very, very softly.

“We love to laugh . . . loud and strong and clear . . . we love to laugh . . .”

Mary Poppins? Emma’s lost it.

I know the crazy bitch has more gum.

She didn’t do so well when that head zombie . . . did to her what he did to me. I saw the moment when she started to lose it, too. The head zombie or whatever (I guess that’s what he was, all the other zombies seemed to defer to him, in that “standing there looking stupid and not really moving” kind of way that zombies do everything) looked at us both for a long time. He seemed a little more aware than the other ones. He seemed confused, looking back and forth from Emma to me, Emma to me. I wondered why he didn’t just eat us. Then he seemed to come to some kind of decision. He dropped his pants and shuffled toward Emma. She started to lose it right about then.

I tried to talk to her during it, so she wouldn’t, like, lose her mind and stuff, but what do you say to your friend when she’s being raped by a zombie and you’re secretly glad it’s not you?

I didn’t know I was next.

I talked to myself, so I wouldn’t lose my mind. I talked about the last swim meet where I’d seen Bobby – but that only reminded me of seeing Bobby’s legs torn out of their sockets and consumed in front of his face while he bled to death, screaming, the blood clouding out in the pool like he’d been attacked by Jaws. I talked about the chicken pot pie I’d had for lunch, about my new lip gloss, about getting my hair highlighted. And when he was done, and he got up off me, and I still felt that part of him in me and noticed it wasn’t attached to him anymore, and that meant it was still --

No, no, no! I’m not supposed to be thinking about that! Seriously, I’m not sure where to go from here, but I sure as hell am not going to go crazy!

“HA HA HA HA!” Emma chimes.

“Shut up, Emma! I know you’ve got more gum! Whore!”

I instantly feel bad about the “whore” comment. At least she’s loony tunes now, so she didn’t really hear it.

For about the hundred-thousandth time, I wonder why a zombie would want to do something like that. Really! They can’t possibly feel it – can they? And I wonder why they haven’t eaten us, like everybody else. And I wonder why the necrotic flesh stuck in me down there just crumbles like warm, wet bread crumbs whenever I try to pick it out. And I wonder if there could be maggots in it –

Four-thousand-eighty-nine! Four-thousand-ninety! Four-thousand-ninety-one!

There’s gotta be a way outta this cage. Isn't there anybody else out there who survived the damn zombies? I mean, like, really! I could use a little help here!