"Jenny Pitcher's looking pretty hot today."
"Yup, can't forget about them tatas. Right Dan. Dan?"
I ignored them, and the loud crunching of Travis' french fries and the rest of the noise of the lunch room. Ben Paul also had his Game Boy set pretty loud, ignored that too
"What're you always scribbling down in that notebook of yours anyway?" he asked.
He wouldn't believe me even if I told him.
It was a recollection of all the events within this universe. First, I was born as Julian DeMarco Santillan of Orange County, on the verge of entering medical school, now I was Daniel Clements, an average teenager in Stone Mountain, Georgia in the eastern part of Atlanta.
My new father was a simple foreman in the iron mills north of town, and my mother was a roadside diner waitress. We were…pretty poor, but it didn't matter to me because the world was going to go to hell anyway.
The two hormonal idiots speaking to me are what those in the know would list as 'walker bait.' Eventually anyway.
Currently, it was September of 2010, meaning it would be a month until the complete collapse of society as we knew it due to the Infected. Also known as walkers. There was talk of some sort of social unrest, but I knew it was the government censoring the truth about how the virus was quickly spreading.
I had spent the past two months using this notebook as a sort of survival guide, cataloguing the different skills I'd need and have for the upcoming apocalypse. I already had a decent bit of knowledge about the people involved, considering I already knew who Ben and Travis were prior to becoming friends with them.
I already knew Spanish, Microbiology, karate, and a tiny bit of gardening. The skills I'd gained was practicing knife attacks on multiple wooden boards in my backyard. I'd also made notes on how many calories I could skimp out on if I ever needed to ration food.
As for a long term plan, I'd need to figure out who I'd need to do it with first. As in who would be in my group, I would definitely need a group.
The problem was, groups had their flaws, sure they provided much better defense against bandits and unfriendly settlements later on, but a bigger group meant more mouths to feed and people to keep track of.
I had been able to take up karate again here in Atlanta to get Bo staff training and keep my cardio up. Running would be essential.
Walkers, unlike the undead from the Last of Us who could run at full speed, were only really dangerous in large numbers unless you were incapacitated slash unarmed and or really careless.
The bell rang. Lunch was over, and another day towards doom approached.
…
I really prepared the best I could but I knew I wouldn't be safe regardless even with all my preparation and knowledge. Humanity was brought to its knees because of the virus and at least half the population died.
Halfway through August, I could tell something was off.
At home, I walked out of my bedroom to see my mother watching something on the morning TV, the National Guard and regiments of the army were being deployed to downtown Atlanta. Dozens of white sheet covered bodies were being sealed away in special zones outside hospitals and the government was refusing to comment on either occurrence.
Today was the day.
I looked over at my parents, wondering if I should truly say goodbye to them.
They weren't my parents, not truly. But anyway, they deserved something.
"Goodbye mother."
"Bye honey," she looked away from the TV in the kitchen. "Good luck at school today."
"Thanks."
Oddly enough, the entire day went by unremarkably until around lunch.
I recognized Jenny Pitcher as a character Ben mentioned to Lee in the Walking Dead Telltale game.
The blonde girl was in her cheerleader uniform, and part of me wondered if these days would be the last days she'd be alive.
"Psst. Hey man you're staring." Travis said to me.
"What?"
"You're staring."
"Aw shit." Ben said looking away.
"Hey freak, you looking at my girl?"
"Yes Todd I was." I said calmly.
The impending zombie apocalypse was way scarier to me than a six foot tall muscle bound footballer. I could tell this guy didn't know how to fight.
"You mind telling me why?"
"No reason in particular."
"Well you better come up with one quick because I'm about five seconds away from kicking your ass."
Right buddy. Come on.
Five. Four. Three.
He tried picking up some mashed potatoes from a nearby lunch tray and smushing it in my face, but failed. I had already caught him by the wrist and smashed his jaw with a reverse punch, gyaku tsuki at full power, twisting off my heels.
He stumbled backward, enraged.
"You're dead!"
"Todd stop it!" Jenny shouted.
He lowered his head and began to launch himself forward, clearly about to tackle me. Wrong way to tackle someone leaving your chin out there like that, one powerful knee and he was out cold.
As Jenny shrieked teachers appeared, I raised my hands defensively, cooperating instantly.
…
Captain of the Football team all star Todd Ramston was sitting across the corridor from me in the principals office with an icepack over his head, the nurse having already looked at him.
"Fuck you man."
I chuckled, shrugging. "I am sorry for looking at your girlfriend, though. Truly if you would've been that mad, I never would have."
Todd was not given the chance to properly respond.
The principal opened the door, fixing her glasses. "Come in boys."
She cleared her throat when we sat in front of her desk.
"You're both suspended."
"What? But I'm the one who got the heck beaten out of me."
"Even still, you're suspended. I've already notified both of your parents."
Todd sighed, leaning back. "This is ludicrous."
I said nothing.
…
At around minute twenty five, I was starting to get nervous.
All the office staff of Stone Mountain High School had pretty much left, including the principal. We were two kids on school suspension for fighting, leaving us completely alone was extremely negligent.
"Sweet, this means I can just leave." Todd chuckled to himself, fixing the same blue varsity jacket matching Ben and Travis' before standing up.
"I wouldn't do that man." I advised.
"And why not?" asked Todd.
I opened the door to the principal's office and looked outside through her window.
In the distance, I could tell something was up.
Traffic had completely stopped. People had gotten out of their cars, I didn't see any real commotion but something was wrong.
"Leave if you have to, but our parents aren't picking us up anytime soon."
"And why's that?"
I found a TV remote behind an administrator's desk and tuned it to the news channel. Where, there was an emergency bulletin.
A man from the governor's office addressed the state from a podium.
"This is not a drill. An unknown pathogen, also known as Wildfire, has put the country in a state of emergency. All citizens are advised to stay indoors until further notice. Thank you."
He ignored all further questions and Todd turned to me.
"You know what he's talking about? Is that why everybody left?"
I knew exactly what he was talking about.
I opened my backpack and made a quick note of the date for the outbreak, or, at least the date that walkers first began to truly appear.
And sure enough they did, they approached the chain link fences around the sides of the school and began to mill about near the front entrance parking lot.
"What the fuck?" asked Todd as we observed through the main office window. "What are those things? They look like people."
Walkers resembled people vaguely. Some less rotten than others, they had glassy white eyes and blood red gums, some missing arms and some missing eyes too.
I witnessed a pair of girls trying to escape out the side of the school and out through the parking lot. As I expected, they were eaten alive. The walkers chewed on their necks, their arms, blood gushing forth, their jaws gnashing through their flesh like knives through tallow.
Todd turned and vomited all over the office floor, I knew this was coming and still felt my stomach lurch.
"What do we do now?" he asked stupidly.
"Call for help."
I dialed 911 but the line was dead.
I shook my head at him, and he instantly began to freak out.
"Fuck!" he scrounged up his hair in a panic.
"Calm down, I need your help."
"For what?"
"We gotta lock up the front entrance of the school to prevent any of those things from getting in."
…
Unfortunately a couple had already wandered inside, stumbling about.
"You got a knife?" Todd hissed to me as we stood at the bottom of the staircase.
"No." I said quietly. "But I have an idea."
I snuck off to the nearby janitor's closet and detached the long wooden handle to a mop to use as a weapon. This could work well enough as a Bo staff.
At full speed and power, I ran up to a walker and swung the staff into its head, it split open, blood flying forth, and it fell onto the ground of the front hallway of Stone Mountain High School.
The sound got the attention of the other walkers, who began to attack me.
I swept one's legs with a karate move, crushing its skull beneath my boot and smacked the other one's head off the wall in a bloody splat.
"Badass." admitted Todd when he approached from upstairs.
"I thought you hated me."
"Eh, you have your uses."
We shuffled around large cabinets displaying trophies and past class graduations to block the front entrance. Without Todd, I don't think I had the muscle to pull this off on my own.
"Now what?" he panted quietly.
Good question.
The school was pretty much surrounded by the undead after what I saw from the main office, a good idea would be to find a secure part of the school and hide in there until the horde dispersed.
"Follow me."
…
The entire school had been evacuated in the half hour Todd and I had been left alone, but I was able to find just two classes still around.
The art class, pinned by a dozen or so walkers in the painting hall, and another set of walkers near the gymnasium.
Todd was carrying a glass shard we had gotten from the shattered display case cabinets to act as a shiv until we could find a proper knife, I myself had such a blade tucked in my back pocket.
"How do we free them?" Todd asked me.
"Why do you think I have the answer to everything?" I sighed. "Well luckily for us this hallway is pretty narrow they shouldn't be able to cross more than two at a time."
The freeing of our friends in the art room was easier than we expected.
After we killed the first set of three walkers, they tripped over the dead bodies of their fallen friends, making it easier to just kill more.
With a hearty thwack of my Bo, Todd and I cleared half the group of undead already.
A small stack of them began to form, props to the school bully and Prom king for actually proving to be a decent survivor.
We helped everyone inside open the door. There were only three people.
"Oh thank you!" a girl said.
"Thank you so much!"
A kid with them then asked. "When are the police coming?"
"We couldn't dial them, the phone wasn't working. For now, we're all we got."
"What?" Everyone was aghast.
"Come on, there are more people who need our help in the gymnasium," I said.
…
We had many makeshift weapons this time around.
The broken off wooden edge of a painting easel, several glass shard shivs, and a set of keys someone had rummaged off a dead body.
With five of us this time, freeing everyone in the gymnasium was much easier.
After counting everyone inside, it was me, Todd, Mr. Parker our band teacher, Travis, Ben, Jenny, this other kid named Ian, as well as two cheerleaders named Mindy and Bianca, and four other students.
"Thank you so much Todd and Daniel." said David Parker.
Everyone murmured in agreement.
I could tell how shaken up everyone was.
Especially Jenny, the girl was scared white and hadn't left her boyfriend's side since seeing him again.
"Okay everyone." I got everyone's attention. "I know things seem a bit terrible right now, but I think the next course of action would be to find out what's going outside of the school."
The only adult in the group did not like the sound of that.
"Wait so." David spoke. "Seems like we're stuck here for now, right. Well, I think its only fitting that I be the one in charge."
"You." I deadpanned. "Because you're the only adult."
"Right." he said. "I know what to do next. I've worked in this school for twenty years, I know how to keep it safe. And how to keep you all safe too."
"Yeah except we just saved your ass." Todd threw a finger between us.
Everyone murmured in agreement again.
"True." someone said.
"You're all a bunch of kids though how do you-" He stopped himself. "Nevermind. Go on."
I spoke. "Don't we have a room where all the tech club kids do videos and announcements? They should have a radio right?"
"Only one way to find out." said Ben.
…
Turns out that they did.
The emergency government broadcast still wasn't giving us much.
"Stay indoors." Travis muttered. "Is that the best they can do?"
"I heard they had a safe zone set up downtown with walls and soldiers. Maybe we should head there." said David.
"Well." I started. "We're safe here for now. The chain link keeps out the worst of the walkers for now, and we have pretty much every other entrance locked."
"Walkers?" asked Ben.
"Yeah cause they walk all weird," I said. "Anyway. We should hunker down here for a while, at least until we can come up with a better plan."
A better plan would have to wait. Because the power just went out.
…
So did most utilities to the school. The army wasn't going to be rolling through anytime soon, nor any emergency services.
What we did find in the oncoming week was helpful however.
Using my Bo, I was able to smash apart the glass to the two vending machines in the cafeteria to scavenge for supplies. And the school kitchen had at least two weeks of food in it for sure.
We had found a cool knife set in our history teacher's classroom. I still had my survival notebook with me with all my notes from the Walking Dead as well as notes for how to survive better that I wrote in everyday.
For now, we were safe here.
...
...
...