Promises

It all started with the frogs.

Dissection wasn’t exactly Marcie’s favourite activity, so did her subject have to return to life just after she’d cut its belly open? If she’d have eaten breakfast, she would have lost it at that point.

Half the frogs in the class struggled against the pins holding them down, their weirdly white-glazed eyes bulging as they strained. One even bit a student who got too close.

Who knew they had teeth? The boy was sent to the school nurse.

Their teacher, a bewildered expression on his face, ran around the room dispatching the reanimated reptiles. It was while he was up the front tending to a student who’d fainted that Connor – the resident Goth – and Marcie’s boyfriend Greg nearly came to blows down the back. Marcie had to break it up herself.

Skinny, dark-haired Connor with his black jeans, boots and skull t-shirt had been stirring, as usual. He used to be such a nice boy, before his parents had been killed last year. He’d been shoving everyone away ever since.

Marcie told him as much; she found time after Algebra – once Greg had gone to his make-up English tutorial.  She did it in the kindest possible way – which left Connor speechless. But the truth just had to be told sometimes, didn’t it?

After that, she caught Connor staring at her several times, but when she caught his eye, his head would drop and he would begin scribbling again.

She found the note in the top of her bag during fifth period chemistry. It was scrawled on Connor’s distinctive yellow legal pad. The beautifully written poem ended with the vow ‘I swear I’ll keep you safe till in my grave’.

Marcie rolled her eyes, but allowed herself a small smile. It seemed her truth-telling had been attractive to him. Strange kid, but his sensitivity was endearing.

She stuffed the poem in the bottom of her bag so Greg wouldn’t find it. She didn’t need him blaming Connor when she broke up with him after school. He was the two-timing bastard, not her.

Last period physics was fascinating – the basics of quantum string theory – and Marcie was engrossed until a louder-than-usual thud sounded on the wall of the next classroom. It had been getting increasingly rowdy in there and Ms Latham finally went to investigate.

An almighty crash in the hallway occurred just after she left. Everyone in the class looked up from their textbooks, startled. The door swung inwards and stayed there.

Little Amy, the quiet geek in the front row, got up to investigate.

Amy’s piercing scream was cut off when a form flung itself through the door and flattened her.

What happened next was entirely surreal. Even now, Marcie couldn’t believe it had actually taken place.

The thing standing on Amy tore a strip out of her face with its teeth before its head swivelled towards the skinny red-haired boy nearest him – Marcie could never remember his name.

Marcie suddenly recognised the attacker’s face: Mr Pimlet, the headmaster. His skin was discoloured – blue-green-grey – his eyes milky-white over the faint blue circles of his irises. His bloody jaw worked noisily.

Amy’s now-silent body twitched as the headmaster eyed the red head like he was surveying his next meal.

Utter bedlam erupted. As every student scrambled for a way out, Marcie saw Amy’s body fling itself upright and become a second, distorted pursuer.

The only way out was the class door and the fire exit at the back. The attackers, increasing in number with every bite, slowly ate through the clump of students all pushing through the partially blocked back exit at the same time.

By some miracle Marcie remained unnoticed under her desk until there was nothing between her and the room’s main door.

She was a good sprinter and, despite slipping in the blood on the floor, she got out into the hall and a long way down it before attracting the attention of what could only be termed zombies, all stumbling about. Confronted with three in a row blocking her path, however, she veered into the nearest classroom, bolted the door behind her and leaned against it as she scanned the room she’d entered and sighed with relief.

Greg was the only one there, his back to her, his strong shoulders broadening in a deep breath before he turned and saw her. And she saw him: with his now milky-white eyes and a blood-soaked jaw.

Marcie froze.

He headed towards her, his look of desire remarkably familiar. Holding out her hands, she pleaded with him, “Greg, please don’t!” Was there anything human left in there at all?

“Greg, plea – ”

Marcie’s sweater and blouse rucked up around her throat as something grabbed hold and jerked her upwards by her clothing. She flew up into the ceiling. Greg was left pawing the empty air beneath her.

Drawn up through a missing tile, Marcie was placed on a nearby metal girder and released. She clung to the girder and peered around to see who her saviour was.

Skin even paler than usual, his blue-black hair almost disappearing in the shadows of the small cavity they hid in, Connor looked back at her … his eyes milky-white over the nearly invisible green discs of his irises. There was a bite mark on his discoloured arm.

Marcie stopped breathing, her body going cold.

They stared at one another as Greg jumped up one, two, three times, attempting to reach her before giving up.

But Connor did not leap over and attack her. Neither had he bitten her.

He’d just lifted her out of the way.

He remained where he was and stared at her before lifting his twisted hand and pointing behind her.

Marcie blinked.

Connor gave an animalistic grunt and pointed again.

Though she really didn’t want to take her eyes off him, she glanced around. The girder led through the ceiling to the other parts of the building.

He pointed again and his grunt conveyed more urgency, though Greg seemed to have wandered off now.

Bewildered, Marcie did as he indicated and crawled along the girder. Connor followed her. In this way, they made it halfway along the building.

She heard the occasional scream from below, but mostly there were grunts and sounds of feeding, running or fighting. She was glad she couldn’t see what was going on.

Neither could they see her. She crawled as quietly as possible in the dusty, dim light that bled through from the rooms underneath them.

The noise from the classrooms seemed to have diminished when she felt a tap on her shoe. She found Connor silently lifting one edge of a tile and peeking through. Then he pulled it to one side and pointed down as he looked at her.

Marcie lowered herself as far as possible – Connor’s face a washed-out moon above her – and dropped to the teacher’s desktop.

It was the art room.

Stepping carefully down onto the swivelling chair, she held the edge of the desk to place her other foot on the floor. The instant it touched down, she heard the first gunshot.

She rushed to the window, stooping as she went. Another shot rang out. Peering over the sill, she spied the source of the ever-increasing gunfire: a bank of army vehicles ranged in a line halfway up the school’s driveway. From behind these, soldiers fired at the entrance to the building. Zombie bodies and their various parts lay sprawled just outside the main auditorium doors.

There was her mathematics teacher, Mr Garratt, curled up on the grass. Most of him.

Several more-whole zombies were still lurching towards the soldiers. It seemed they took a few shots before they went down.

Marcie stepped away from the window feeling nauseous.

Connor’s upside down face waited from the ceiling. She gestured for him to join her and watched as he nimbly climbed down and stood before her.

He looked awful.

“I’m so sorry, Connor,” she whispered.

His head leaned to one side as he gazed at her with those horrific eyes, then he held up his hands and regarded them for a moment. His fingernails were jagged and uneven, sharp and pointed in places.

Connor swung around and made his way to the paper cutter – what they’d always called the guillotine, though now that nickname took on a more sinister meaning.

Lifting the blade with one hand, he put the other under it and pushed it down, severing the fingernails entirely as Marcie gasped. He then repeated this with his other hand and the two thumbs.

Surprisingly, he didn’t bleed much.

Why had he done that?

Moving faster than she expected, Connor grabbed Marcie’s arm, pulled her towards the open window on the other side from the driveway, and climbed through. With superhuman strength, he picked her up and, clinging impossibly to the pipes and struts, lowered her safely to the ground.

Blood now spotted her clothes – where his nail-less fingers had gripped her – but he hadn’t touched her skin.

Was he deliberately trying not to infect her?

Connor led Marcie over to the neighbouring woodwork building – away from the army trucks. He was trying to find another way out.

But just as they approached the far corner of the building, two soldiers appeared.

Three things happened at once: the soldiers’ guns pivoted down to point at them; Marcie screamed, “Don’t shoot!”; and Connor stepped directly in front of Marcie.

Only one soldier let off a round, but it hit Connor in the chest, blowing half of it away. He dropped where he stood.

_________

With so many deaths to deal with, there were no less than three graveside ceremonies happening nearby when Connor was buried. They’d been told to bury the dead as quickly as possible.

Marcie had just walked over with the priest from Greg’s funeral, where his mother had been in hysterics; she’d had to bury both her sons that morning. There had been many more people there than here.

Marcie stood next to Connor’s aunt – stoic but obviously heart-broken. But the only other people there were the priest and the gravediggers, who had been roped in to lower the coffin into the ground.

After the priest had his say, Marcie read Connor’s poem and thanked him for saving her life. This elicited a few disbelieving glances.

They dedicated him to the earth and were about to pull out the coffin’s supports when there was a loud cry at the closest of the other funerals, and then a scream of terror.

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

Marcie blinked. She could have sworn the knocking had come from Connor’s coffin, but … that wasn’t possible.

One of the neighbouring mourners ran down one man, then another as the party at Connor’s graveside stood frozen in horror.

It was happening again.

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

It was only when the newly-infected man turned his milky-white eyes on them that they realised their own peril.

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock.

The knocking was getting insistent.

Hoping against reason the zombie would chase the others, Marcie dropped to her knees and hid behind Connor’s coffin.

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-CREAK. The sound of splintering wood.

Hearing rapid footfall in all directions, Marcie couldn’t tell which she should avoid.

Slam!

The mourner-turned-zombie landed on Connor’s coffin lid and peered hungrily at her as she clung to the handle in terror.

But the zombie’s body went flying backwards as the coffin lid exploded off the coffin. Connor’s arms and legs, in strength unknown in life, pushed Marcie’s predator a dozen metres away.

Connor’s hand, even more discoloured now, clamped down on the ragged edge of the coffin as he sat up and looked at Marcie with his milky-white eyes, the hole in his chest making his other arm sag.

I swear I’ll keep you safe till in my grave.

 

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