Title: The Survivors Club
Genre: Teen horror
Rating: R (for graphic violence, gore, language)
Story Type: Novel - complete
Word count: (chapter) 5,150 - (novel) 60,328
Summary: Five teens come together to survive when a zombie apocalypse breaks out and forces them to depend on one another. Through their travels we learn that, in extreme situations, some people become better than they thought, some become worse, and some just don't change, at all.Author's Note: This is part of a complete manuscript.
Chapter 2
“I have got to get out of here.” Lissa put one foot in front of the other, making a slow path around the bodies. She didn’t let her eyes focus on any one person, any particular face. She tried to focus strictly on the ground, winding her way around the bodies.
Clear spots were found for half of her trek across the gym, right up until she found a pile of intestines staring her in the face. The medical geek in her instantly wanted to decipher small intestine from large. The regular girl inside slapped herself and told her to stop being a moron. Small or large, it didn’t matter. She just had to get over it without stepping into it.
Lissa looked down at her feet and groaned. She and Jessica had been in line at a club when the zombies poured into the streets, hoping that their fake IDs would get them past security. Lissa was still wearing her purple high heels and the black slinky dress that she had snagged from her mother’s closet. Those shoes were not going to help her get across that pile of guts, but at the same time, she didn’t want to do it barefoot, either.
Stepping over them would have been a possibility, except for the outstretched arm on the other side. If she stepped over the guts, she’d land on the arm; that wasn’t good. Jumping seemed to be her only option, and there was no room for a real running start. Lissa only had about six inches to get a good lead, but it was her only choice.
Lissa backed up as far as she could and stared at her goal, the patch of free cement beyond the dead girl’s arm. Lissa looked back to the door. She should just go back. There might be a marker inside the room, and she could use that to right on the door. She could write, “ALIVE INSIDE,” and when someone came to check the school, they would know to check the room.
That was the coward’s way out, though, and Lissa was no coward. Neither was she the masochistic type. Eli would never let her hear the end of it if she went back inside. She wasn’t a killer either, and if she went back in and Eli started up, either Lissa would kill him herself, or she’d toss his ass out to the zombies. No, she couldn’t turn back. She had no choice but to go on. She had to find help. She had to get them out of the mess.
“I really wish you were here, Jess,” Lissa said softly as she turned back to the pile waiting for her. Lissa took a deep breath, ran and leapt. She was in the air, and she was going to make it, yes, yes… no! She landed, but far further than she had expected. Lissa fell down right on top of a body. She started to scream.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh shit! Oh… fucking shit!” Lissa didn’t consider herself a potty mouth. She was more than capable of expressing herself without profanity on most occasions. This, however, well… She forgave herself for the bad words because they were damn well deserved.
The body beneath her was slick and hard. Again, that geek tried to rear its geeky head, but this time, she shouted out loud, “Shut up, you twit!” Lissa scrambled until she could find her feet. One foot was on the ground, but the other—
“Oh, gross!” Her heel was inside someone’s stomach. “Oh, nasty!” Lissa yanked her foot out and stomped her heel down onto the floor. “This was such a bad idea,” she muttered.
“Lissa!” She spun around and saw Jessica’s head sticking out the door. “Lissa, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Jess!” Lissa looked down at herself. Blood streaked her arms and legs. Her dress was wet with it. But, she wasn’t hurt. Scared out of her mind, but she wasn’t hurt. “Go back inside, Jess, I’m fine!”
“I’m coming with you!”
“No!” Lissa shouted quickly. “Go back inside!” All of this screaming was stupid on both of their parts, and Lissa was sure that Jessica realized that as much as she did. What if there were still zombies around? They would hear the noise and come right to her. Could she make it back across the body strewn floor in time? Lissa had made enough racket when she fell, she didn’t need to make anymore.
She waved at the door, and Jessica nodded. The door closed again. Lissa liked to believe that her friend wasn’t just afraid, that she was thinking of Lissa. She liked to believe that Jessica knew that this was Lissa’s chance to really stand up and do something. That’s why she went back inside. Though, it didn’t really matter why she went back inside as long as she closed that door. Jessica was safe inside that room. No one was safe outside of it.
~*~
Jessica pressed her forehead against the cold metal door, eyes closed and crying. She actually let her go out there alone. She couldn’t believe it. Lissa wasn’t strong, she wasn’t tough. She was… Well, Lissa was her friend, but she wasn’t a hero. Jessica had always been the hero, and now, she was just the wimpy loser sitting in the room, waiting for help to arrive.
“I let her go alone,” she whispered. “How could I do that?”
“You’re smart, that’s how. You don’t have a freaking death wish.”
“Oh, shut it, Eli!” Jessica turned around and stared at the others. Really, if any of them should have been the hero, it should have been Collin. He was the sports guy, the tough guy, the jock. He should have been able to lead them out of there. He should have done something besides mutter platitudes to someone who wasn’t even listening.
Tamara may have been popular, but she was no ditz. These days, the smart kids were coming out on top. It was no longer cool to be stupid. Tamara did well in her classes, might even end up being salutatorian if—
Jessica laughed at herself. Yeah, like there was going to be a graduation. There was a freakin’ zombie apocalypse going on outside! School’s out forever, baby. Time for the survival lessons, and the way Tamara rocked back and forth on the floor, there was no top 15% in her future.
Actually, Jessica was kind of jealous of Tamara. She was in jeans and tennies, she was comfortable. Jessica’s feet were cold against the cement floor, and the little red dress she wore did nothing to give her heat. God, what she wouldn’t give for a pair of running shoes and some sweat pants.
“What are you laughin’ about?” Eli asked her.
Jessica said, “I’m not laughing, anymore.”
“You’re grinning like an idiot. What is there to grin about?”
Jessica put both hands to her face and touched the corners of her mouth. Huh, weird, she was smiling. Maybe she had snapped. Hours of silence and a weakening of her spine made her mind snap. Elvis has left the building, folks! Jessica has lost her last bit of sanity.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Collin, shut the hell up!” And Tamara’s sanity wasn’t far to follow, apparently. Tamara was thin with big eyes that gave her an innocent look, but there was unexpected ferocity in her voice as she screamed, “Stop telling me it will be okay!”
“Come on, Tams. You’re just freaked out. Calm down and—“
“And, what, Collin? The zombies will turn into butterflies and we’ll laugh and have ice cream? People are dead, Collin, they’re dead! How in the hell is that alright? How—Jesus! There are Zombies, you moron!”
Just as quickly as Tamara lost her mind, things quieted down. Tamara’s chest rose and fell quickly, her heavy breathing the only noise in the room. Jessica stared at her. Now, that was something she hadn’t expected. She didn’t even think that Tamara had words in her. She figured they would have been dragging her though the littered bodies when Lissa came back with help.
Lissa…
Okay, this wasn’t right, and Jessica couldn’t handle it anymore. Lissa couldn’t have been gone more than fifteen minutes. Jessica could catch up with her. Letting her go on her own wasn’t right. She told herself that she was giving her best friend the chance to be strong, but really, Jessica was just being a coward. She was terrified of what laid outside that door, and because of that, she’d let her friend walk into the slaughter alone.
“Oh, screw this,” Jessica said. She stomped barefoot across the floor. Her leg brushed against Collin’s arm and she jumped. “Damn!” Way to go. She could barely touch a living person without freaking out. How was she going to go out into that?
No, Jessica would not let fear take her over. She was going to go out there and save her friend, and if she couldn’t save her, she was at least going to be there with her. They would go down together, and that was that.
Jessica rooted through the room, throwing things aside, looking for anything that she could use as a weapon. A dirty workman’s shirt wasn’t going to save her from zombies, but it would keep her warm. Jessica held her breath and threw the shirt over her head. The shirt stank of old sweat and cigarette smoke, but at least it was something. She also found a pair of grimy black boots, but they were way too big for her. She would just have to go barefoot until she could find something to use. Maybe they’d even be able to make it to the locker room, and she could get shoes from her gym locker.
“What are you doing?” Jessica turned toward Eli. He didn’t even care. Lissa was out there on her own, trying to save their lives, trying to save his life, and he didn’t care. Eli’s indifference angered her. It sent a hot flush up her neck and into her face.
“I’m looking for weapons.” She picked up an air pump and tested the weight in her hands. It wasn’t very heavy, wouldn’t do much damage, but… Jessica pursed her lips and pulled on the handle. She stumbled backwards as the handle came flying out. Jessica took two awkward steps backward on her heels and bumped into Eli. She tumbled over his shoulders and fell hard to the ground. “Way to catch me, jackass!”
“Hey!” He shoved her legs off of him and scooted backwards. “You’re the one who came tumbling down like London Bridge.”
“Oh, shut up.” Jessica struggled to her feet and looked at her new weapon. It would due for the time being. Holding it with both hands, she might be able to get a good plunge into an eye or something. When she put her shoe in that one zombie’s eye, she had found the flesh to be pretty much mush, easy going in and easy coming out.
“Alright,” Jessica said, “everybody find a weapon of some kind. We’re going after Lissa."
“The hell we are!"
“You’re nuts, you know that?”
Jessica was surprised that the boys spoke up so quickly. Okay, so maybe not Eli so much, but she was almost sure that Collin would at least pretend that he wasn’t a wuss. She heard an old joke in her head, the comedian Christopher Titus in a high-pitched screech shouting, Don’t be a wussy!
Collin’s girlfriend was sitting right there, albeit she was giving him a death glare, but she was still there. What guy wanted to look like a punk in front of his girl? Apparently, Collin was too afraid to care. Or maybe he just found a little bit of smarts inside that empty head of his. This was a pretty bad idea. Though, Jessica figured that Lissa’s idea was worse, so hers wasn’t so bad.
“You’re nuts, you know that?”
Jessica was surprised that the boys spoke up so quickly. Okay, so maybe not Eli so much, but she was almost sure that Collin would at least pretend that he wasn’t a wuss. She heard an old joke in her head, the comedian Christopher Titus in a high-pitched screech shouting, Don’t be a wussy!
Collin’s girlfriend was sitting right there, albeit she was giving him a death glare, but she was still there. What guy wanted to look like a punk in front of his girl? Apparently, Collin was too afraid to care. Or maybe he just found a little bit of smarts inside that empty head of his. This was a pretty bad idea. Though, Jessica figured that Lissa’s idea was worse, so hers wasn’t so bad.
Jessica let them bitch for a couple of minutes before she said, “Done now? Because you’re wasting time. You need to talk less and search more. Find anything sharp or something you can use to stab out an eye. If we run into something—“ Jessica gulped hard. “If we run into something, we need to be able to fight.”
“Yeah, you go with that,” Eli muttered. He stood up, but only to go to the other side of the room and plop back down. “I’m sitting right here until the military comes. If you’re smart, you’ll stay here with me. We’ll slap a note on the door, letting them know we’re alive in here, and that’s that.”
“Think about it, Eli,” Jessica said, “we might not be alive by the time they come looking. We don’t know how many of them are out there, or when the military is even going to get over here. We could be dead of thirst or starvation by the time they show up.”
“Or I could have snapped and killed you and Collin by then,” Tamara said. All eyes turned to her, and Jessica couldn’t help but grin. She and Tamara had been friends in elementary school, but it didn’t take long for them to separate. By seventh grade, both girls had their own little groups, and their childhood friendship just didn’t seem to be that important.
Jessica had tried not to judge Tamara. Both she and Tamara had been popular within their own circles, and should have easily been able to ignore one another. Jessica, however, remembered when they were little and Tamara didn’t seem so flighty. She was smart, but she took everything so lightly that Jessica didn’t expect much from her anymore. Of course, if she played devil’s advocate, Tamara probably looked at Jessica and saw a girl that liked to get into too much trouble. Jessica didn’t look for trouble, it just managed to find her more times than not.
Tamara wiped her hands on her jeans and took a look around the room. “Okay,” she said, “there’s gotta be something here.” She looked down at Collin and shook her head. “If you want me to wait until after the zombie apocalypse is over to break up with you, then get off your ass and find something. Otherwise, I’ll just do it now and get it over with.”
Jessica looked at Tamara and nodded. Maybe she was wrong about her. Tamara had been strong when she was younger, but thought that she’d gotten weaker over the years. Instead of standing up and really saying something when one of her friends did something wrong, she just made jokes until no one was angry, anymore. She avoided the confrontations with her sunny personality. Now, though, watching the strength rise in her, Jessica thought maybe she wasn’t so weak, after all.
“We can’t just leave Lissa out there,” Tamara said. “We can’t just leave her out there to die alone. We can’t leave her to die, at all.”
Jessica walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks,” she said softly.
Tamara covered Jessica’s hand with her own and said, “Thank me when we find her alive.” Tamara gave her a tight smile, then looked around the room. Her smile was gone. “Alright, boys, get up and get to lookin’! You’ve got two minutes to find something or we’re leaving you here.”
Tamara and Collin
The sun was just starting to set when they turned down the dirt road and headed into the cornfield. The horizon must have looked beautiful, red and orange, a blazing end to the day, but Tamara couldn’t see it over the tall stalks. She hadn’t really liked the idea of this party, but Collin wanted to go. He said it would be fun, but Tamara only got visions of Freddy vs. Jason. Lots of drinking, some sex to be had, and then a maniac in a hockey mask slashing through the drunken teenagers with a machete.
Cornfields scared Tamara. Turning in either direction, she wouldn’t be able to see something coming up on her until it was too late. She was also afraid of the dark, but she wasn’t going to tell Collin that anymore than she would tell her friends. At sixteen years old, she was supposed to be over that stupid fear. If she just waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, she would be able to see well enough. Too bad Tamara never waited that long. The second the lights went out, the moment that her vision was gone completely, she panicked. She still slept with the television on, claiming it was for the noise, saying she needed sound to get to sleep and she would only end up staying awake all night singing to music, but knowing full well it was because the television gave her enough light that she wouldn’t panic.
The cornfield was the same way. She couldn’t see anything but corn. What if there was danger waiting in the stalks? Tamara still had the bite mark on her leg from the dog that had bitten her. She was six, on her grandparents’ farm, and no one had known that there was a wild dog lurking the fields, not until it ran out and bit Tamara just above her ankle. The bite wasn’t hard enough to break the bone, thank God, but it was definitely hard enough to break the skin. Every time Tamara looked at the scar, she remembered the way her blood had flowed out freely, coating the ground and her pretty white socks. A girl’s earliest memory should not have been a dog attack, but for Tamara, that was the first memory of life that she held.
Collin knew she was afraid of cornfields, but he reassured her that everything would be fine. He was right there with her, after all, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Tamara wished she could believe him, but she had to admit that her boyfriend wasn’t the brightest tool in the shed. In fact, his lack of common sense was just one of the many reasons she had for breaking up with him. The plan had been to break it up that night, actually, but now, she couldn’t do it. He wasn’t just dim, he was also an asshole when his feelings were hurt, and he’d undoubtedly leave her stranded in the cornfield. She would just have to wait until they left the party to let him know that it was over.
“I really don’t want to do this.” Tamara gripped the arm of the handle as the car started to slow. They were getting closer. Tamara could hear the music. Someone without a shirt on ran across the road. Really? Didn’t even wait until the sun was all the way down? “What if we get in trouble? I can’t afford to get in trouble, Collin.”
“You won’t get in trouble.” Collin flexed his fingers and wrapped them again around the steering wheel. “You don’t even have to drink. We’re just here for the fun.”
“Yeah,” she muttered, “the fun.” Tamara watched the party come into view. Already, people were dancing, and plenty of them were drunk. She rolled down the window and listened to the party. The music grew louder the closer they came. Soulja Boy’s “Pow” blasted through the corn and Tamara laughed out loud. They were in Iowa, for crying out loud! She had expected something a little more rock and a little less rap.
Tamara got it. She was supposed to think these things were cool. She was popular and fun, everyone wanted to be around her. Tamara wouldn’t lie and say that she didn’t like it. She had managed to gain popularity without a cheerleading uniform. She was just fun, and it drew people around her. However, Tamara’s idea of fun was a little less party in a field and a little more cracking jokes and playing games.
Popularity demanded her participation at these events, and she didn’t like any of them. Sure, she liked her taste of beer every now and again, and she enjoyed a nice shot of Jagermeister, but she didn’t see anything fun about getting so wasted that she puked all over herself and woke up with a splitting headache. She didn’t begrudge her friends their fun, but she didn’t join in. At least with Tamara around, they knew they would always have a designated driver.
Collin stopped the car and while he got out quickly, running over to his friends from the football team, Tamara sat in the car and watched. They were all laughs and dude hugs, one arm around the shoulders and a fist pat on the back with a quick release. Tamara laughed at them, and laughed even more when Collin turned toward the car and grinned.
He was attractive, all straight lines and hard edges. He had that rugged attractiveness to him. He looked like a good ol’ fashioned farm boy, but really, he was about as city as they come. He acted like the corn parties were no big deal, but he was a lot more comfortable in someone’s house, or throwing a football around the backyard. Collin’s idea of roughing it was a day without his cell phone.
Tamara’s smile died as Collin waved her from the car. Something didn’t feel right. Collin would call it paranoia, but Tamara thought it was just a healthy sense of fear. Her mother had made her read a book last year about fear, swearing that every young woman should read it. Her mother said that this book would save her life. The book said to let go of irrational fear so that the real fear could get through. Yeah, that worked wonders. Letting go of fear was not that easy, and she liked to believe that her fear that night, out in the cornfield was perfectly rational. She didn’t want to get out of the car. There had to be a reason for that.
Reasons were abandoned, however, when the door flew open. Tamara jumped and almost punched her friend, Sissy, in the face. “Oh my God!” Tamara shouted. “Are you psycho?”
“No, you’re paranoid. Come on!” Sissy grabbed one arm and Eliza grabbed the other. Both yanked her out of the car so fast that Tamara tumbled to the ground. The second her hands hit the dirt, she felt wrong, strange. She didn’t have time to think about it, to put it into perspective, though, because she was soon back on her feet, being dragged through the crowd.
“So, yeah, half the guys are drunk already and we’ve only been here about an hour.”
“I thought they’d have waited, ya know? At least until the sun went down.”
“I’m so glad you came! It wouldn’t be a party without you! We even found a spot to have games!”
“I wanted to bring a karaoke machine, but Sissy said no, it was totes stupid and I couldn’t do it. You’d have loved it!”
Tamara tried to listen to them, tried to plaster on a smile, but the pit of her stomach ached and she could only thing that this was not the place to be right now. She looked around, her head swiveling back and forth so much that she was surprised her head didn’t fly off her shoulders. Where was Collin? He brought her out here and abandoned her! No wonder they were soon to be broken up. Okay, so she was with her friends, figured she’d be okay, but… but… he knew she didn’t want to be there!
“I should find Collin,” Tamara said, “make sure we don’t lose each other. He’s my ride.”
“If Collin bails, I’ve got you.” Sandy Moss was gorgeous, and if she drank a little less, she could have been a lot more fun. Her light brown hair didn’t match her warm brown skin or her bright green eyes. Oddly enough, the hair and the eyes were natural, and what drew Tamara to pull her into the group. She was unique, and she was outgoing. Sandy was also one hell of a drinker.
“Who’s going to drive him home, then?” The drinking was another reason Tamara thought this whole thing was a bad idea. The sober to drunk ratio was going to be really screwed; not enough sober people per car to make sure everyone got home safe. At a house party, they could just leave the drunken cars behind and pile liquored up teens into a few cars to get them home, or they could crash where they were. They couldn’t just leave their cars out in the cornfield.
“Collin will be fine,” Sissy told her. “Let’s party!”
And party Tamara tried. She wanted to have fun, she liked to have fun, but the night grew darker and the fire seemed to grow dimmer. The kegs were set up around the fire, and of course, that was the thing that Tamara didn’t want to do. She had one beer to please the crowd, and sipped on it well into flatness. The games spot, where she would have preferred to be, was about twenty feet away from the fire, and the glow just didn’t reach that far. Who thought this was a good idea? Probably Sissy. She wasn’t the brightest in the group. Hm, maybe she should hook up with Collin and they could be one perfectly dim light bulb.
That was mean, but Tamara wasn’t in the mood to be kind. It was dark, and she kept hearing strange noises. At one point, a rat ran out of the fields and Tamara jumped so high that her feet went a good quarter of the way up a six foot stalk of corn. Tamara didn’t mind the laughter when she landed flat on her butt because, come on, it was pretty damn funny. She laughed herself once she was up and had wiped the dirt off the butt of her dress.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a wink, “laugh it up. But, when that rat gives somebody rabies—“
Tamara was cut off as someone came wheeling through the field. Two hours into the party, the night was dark and the light from the motorcycle blinded her. Tamara threw up an arm to cover her eyes, waiting for the light to go out. The light didn’t go out, though, because the person on the bike didn’t plan on sticking around. Tamara couldn’t see the face, and she didn’t recognize the voice. There was at least a hundred people out here in the field; no way she could have seen and met everyone there.
“It happened! Shit, dudes, it finally happened!” Tamara stepped to the side to look at the guy on the bike. She didn’t recognize him from school, and though his words sounded panicked, he was hopping up and down on his bike like it was his birthday. “The zombie apocalypse has hit! It’s all over the news! Get the hell out of the corn before the zombies get you!”
Someone threw an empty plastic cup at him. Someone else threw a half empty can of beer. Everyone laughed, everyone except Tamara. She didn’t believe in the zombie apocalypse. That was pure fiction, something to make good movies out of to watch on Halloween. Something was going on, though, and the words touched something in her stomach.
“Suit yourselves! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, assholes!”
The messenger spun his bike around, kicking up dirt and rocks, and sped back down the path. And just like that, it was over. The party was back on, and the group had something new to play with. “New game!” somebody called out. “Let’s play Zombie Apocalypse!”
Talk about a game that Tamara really didn’t want to play, and it was a game that she played far too soon.
The zombies came lurching out the field about an hour after the messenger had brought the news. The screams were terrifying and loud enough to be heard over the roar of the crowd. Zombie Apocalypse was played pretty much a game of tag, but when Dani Prentice went down, she didn’t laugh. She screamed so loud that others went toward her, worried that she had broken an ankle as the fake zombie took her down. A broken ankle would have been the least of her problems. A real zombie was on her, biting at her arm as she tried to swat it away, her arms and legs flailing.
Someone came running, and it was like a game of telephone. The shouts were passed on down the line until they reached Tamara. “Zombies! Dude, that guy wasn’t lying! Run!”
Tamara didn’t immediately run, though. She figured it was someone messing with her, the guys playing a joke on her because she didn’t want to play the game. It wasn’t until Sissy went down less than ten feet in front of her that Tamara believed. It wasn’t until Sissy’s blood sprayed the corn stalks around her that Tamara realized that, holy cow, this was for real!
Tamara took off running, heading straight for the car. “Collin!” He was nearby when the attack started, but now, she couldn’t see him. Was he down? Oh, God, please don’t let him be down. Collin had the keys, and Tamara couldn’t get away if Collin was down.
Tamara cursed and shamed herself. It didn’t matter that she was thinking about breaking up with him. Collin was a human being and he didn’t deserve to be zombie food. Tamara didn’t think of herself as particularly selfish, but that was one hell of a selfish thing for her to think. And, what if she couldn’t find him because he was out there looking for her? She felt horrible. At least, she felt horrible until she saw Collin come tearing out of the field.
He didn’t even look her way. He was inside of the car before Tamara realized that the doors were unlocked. The engine was already revving by the time she opened the door, and Collin was starting to back up before Tamara had the door closed. Only when she slammed the door did he look at her, shock making his eyes widen.
“Go!” Tamara shouted. She wasn’t about to yell at him because he forgot about her. She would save that as just another reason they were going to break up, and that break up was now more than a consideration. It was a flat out truth, an inevitability.
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