Chapter 5:
Of Friends and Foam Cores
“Okay everyone! I’m going to explain the rules of our first game!” Carly declared. “We like to start with this one as a little warm-up! It’s called ‘Zombies’!”
Sam heard a squeak that could only come from Mary.
“So the way Zombies works, is you start with the Zombie Lord, and that’ll be me this time. If a zombie kills you, then you become a zombie,” Carly explained, tossing a rubbery orange disk on the ground. “And come back to the respawn point. Zombies can’t be killed, after all. If you’re a zombie and you’re killed or injured, you can come back here and touch the disk, then you’re healed. And we keep fighting until all the humans die. Any questions?”
“How do the humans win?” Someone asked.
Her answer was a smirk. There was evil in her eyes.
“Well, better spread out!” She called. “We start in thirty seconds!”
The students scattered like bowling pins. Sam jogged away, realizing her hair was getting in her eyes. She reached into her pocket for a hair tie, and pulled it back into a ponytail so she could see clearly.
I wonder when the last time I tied my hair back like this was… Her heart ached.
“BEGIN!” A loud whistle echoed across the field.
Sam wasn’t that close, so she didn’t know what to do at first. She held up her sword and just… waited.
It didn’t take long for people to start dying. She couldn’t see that clearly from where she was standing, but Carly was pretty good. She moved fast, and the number of zombies began to increase.
Soon, Sam lost the luxury of waiting.
The first zombie to reach her was a lanky boy who swung his sword without much force behind it. She was able to block with her own blade, and dodged his second swing. That gave her the chance to strike him in the chest.
But more were coming. She dodged the next boy’s attack too, but he was a little faster, not giving her an opening to strike. She stepped back, keeping her sword between the two of them as he advanced.
Then she spotted her opportunity. Frustrated at not being able to hit her, the boy put in a little more force than he’d meant to, and he lost his hand because of it. She stepped back and caught her breath as he tucked his arm behind his back and glared at her.
His next swing didn’t have the force of both hands behind it, and it was a wild strike that she managed to dodge. She turned her sword and stabbed him in the gut, sending him stumbling back. She’d killed two zombies already!
Sam’s heart surging with adrenaline, she whipped her head around the field, searching for the next one. What she saw made her blood run cold. It wasn’t the next “one”. More like the next “dozen”. While she had fended a couple of them off, the zombie horde had been propagating, and now the humans were in the minority.
She couldn’t help the smile spreading across her face. This was actually exciting!
“SAAAAAAAMM!”
Sam whirled around to see Mary running towards her on her scrawny little legs, face flushed with exertion. “Help…” She wheezed out. Four zombies were chasing her.
“They’re coming… gotta… get away… fight… bleh… dead… dying…”
“Mary… you can do this,” she assured her, giving her a thumbs’ up.
“What?!”
“I believe in you.”
“I can… barely… breathe!”
“I’ll never forget your bravery.”
Sam turned and jogged away.
“You… you MEANIE!!!” Mary wailed as she was consumed by the zombie horde.
Her roommate’s noble sacrifice barely bought Sam two seconds. The number of humans still standing had dropped down to double digits and even a novice like her could see that at this point fighting was meaningless. She’d be overwhelmed immediately.
It really does feel like a zombie movie now. Sam was vigilant, and her athleticism helped her stay out of range for the most part. But with the number of meatshie- brave comrades steadily decreasing, more attention was turning towards her.
“Heya Sam!”
She barely noticed Carly coming at her from the side, just managing to jump out of the way before her sword connected.
“Carly?!”
“You may have handled my minions nicely… but now, you face the ZOMBIE LORD!” Carly boomed theatrically. She stepped forward, thrusting her sword at Sam’s chest.
Instantly Sam could tell that Carly was on a different level from the others. Her strikes were targeted and precise. There was a fluidity to her motions that the boys from earlier lacked. An untrained eye might not have noticed the difference, but she could tell.
“What is that? Fencing?”
Carly brightened. “So glad you noticed! Georgia High School Fencing League, three years,” she said with a flourish.
Great, that was just what she wanted to hear right now.
It was all she could do to keep pace with the fencer. Her eyes were constantly on the sword, watching every dip and twist and thrust, and her own blade was dancing gold and red in the night, blocking all she could.
It was exhilarating! Every swing was like life and death, her heart just wouldn’t stop singing! She couldn’t resist the exuberance pounding in her chest, pushing every muscle forward as she struggled to stay alive. The danger wasn’t real, but it felt real. And she loved it!
Then a strike landed on her shoulder and she jumped back, dropping her sword and grabbing it.
“Whoa! Hey, you good?!” Carly gasped, lowering her weapon and kneeling next to her. “I didn’t think I hit you that hard!”
“N-No, no, I’m fine,” Sam muttered, standing up. “Just… overreacted, that’s all.” She tucked her arm behind her back and grabbed her sword, and her opponent did the same.
Carly smirked.
“Then allow us to resume, puny human!” She threw her head back and cackled. “And see if you can resist becoming rust on my blade, one more lost soul to join the- Mike, what the fuck?!”
She whirled around and glared at the boy who’d stabbed her from behind.
“Bitch! I was in the middle of something!” She shouted, swinging her sword angrily at him.
“Respawn,” he said, pointing his sword across the field.
She flipped him off and stormed away.
Sam didn’t thank him for stepping in, she was too busy catching her breath. And they had bigger problems to worry about. More zombies were approaching, and this time it really resembled a horde. They were waving their weapons and charging, and for a second she wasn’t sure what to do.
Then Mike got to work.
It had to be seen to be believed. The first three to approach him were cut down before she could blink. He dodged the first strike while he swung up into the boy’s stomach, turning to the second in a single motion. As he did, the second boy swung at him, and again he dodged by a hair, finishing him off just as quickly. The third fared no better, and in an instant all three were marching back to the respawn point.
He wasn’t even out of breath.
More zombies came in waves of two and three, and they fell the same way. It was like they were swinging their swords right where he had been a second earlier, so tantalizingly close to hitting their mark and yet miles away for all it mattered. Meanwhile Mike’s blade was dancing, the dark blue of its edge practically streaking in the air as he cut down his foes with practiced skill.
Carly’s fencing technique had caught her off-guard, but he was-
A poke in her back caused her to jump, as she realized far too late that she’d completely let her guard down. Mary stood behind her, her face filled with so much joy it looked like she was going to burst.
“I-I did it!” She cheered. “I got you!”
Sam swallowed her curse and stomped over to the respawn point in frustration. By the time she made it back to rejoin the horde, it was already over. Co-President Michael may have been skilled, but apparently even he couldn’t beat back the overwhelming wave of zombies.
“…And that’s the game!” Carly declared. “Mike is the last human standing, and that means he becomes the new Zombie Lord!”
“It’ll be a short game then!” A boy with dark hair and a knife called.
They were playing another round of this? But that last one had practically taken everything out of her! She was still struggling to catch her breath when Mary ran over, her eyes still shining.
“Sam! Sam, let’s stick together this time, okay?” She asked hopefully. “We can last longer if we team up!”
“…Sure, if you want.”
“…Really?!” Mary looked like a girl whose mother just said she would buy her a pony for her birthday.
Sam just nodded in permission, her mind already on the next game. A girl like Mary brought to mind that old adage, “I don’t have to outrun the zombie horde, I just have to outrun you.”
Mike stood on the dot and turned towards the spread-out students, and a thick pressure fell over the field.
He walked forward, holding his sword up in front of him, not making any aggressive moves. Nobody would come near him.
Then she felt it. The pressure of his eyes staring right at her. She could barely see his face but somehow she knew he was staring right at her.
Then he leapt. Not towards her, but to the side, slashing at one of the boys who had been trying to circle around him. He took him out in one stroke, and utter bedlam ensued.
Sam had thought that Carly was fast when she was racking up kills as Zombie Lord. But she had no idea what “fast” looked like. Mike carved through humans like a hot knife through butter, advancing forward the whole time.
He was headed right for them.
“Sam! We gotta run!” Mary wailed, fleeing in terror.
But Sam wasn’t running. If she could see the smile on her face right now, she imagined it would look rather crazed. She hadn’t felt this kind of a rush in ages! Like before, with Carly, she wanted to try her skill against the foe in front of her. Even if she couldn’t follow his sword. Even if she had barely any skill of her own.
It was exciting!
Mike was three steps away when he finally turned his attention back to her, pointing his sword right at her throat. She held her own sword up towards his. She stepped forward and swung…
And he was gone. She felt the lightest of brushes across her stomach as his blade slid over her shirt, cutting her down before she could even think about dodging.
But her smile never left her face.
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