Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [69]
I guess my commentary must have offended her, because Mrs. Peeples bared her teeth with a grunting roar in a tiny little voice that was almost cute except it signaled a real desire to deal death and undeath.
I yanked the dart gun from across my back and aimed just as she started toward me in a jolting, dragging speed walk. Her arms flailed around her almost like they were disconnected and her head turned sideways as she sniffed for me as these things often did.
I pulled off a shot and the dart entered her neck exactly where Kevin had told me to place it. She kept moving forward, one step, two steps, three…
Bam!
She teetered forward, her red eyes rolling back in her head, and then collapsed down on the ground between the mess of little desks that had been tossed about during the outbreak.
I stared down at her, totally silent and unmoving. Had I killed her? Had the fall killed her? I mean, zombies are half-rotten, so they often die from head blows that would only give a regular person a hell of a headache. That’s one of their few weaknesses.
I set the dart gun down and instead pulled out my 9mm. Holding it with one hand, I grabbed the zombie’s shoulder and flipped her on her back. She stared up at the ceiling with open, blank eyes.
“Not dead,” I said with a sigh.
See, they were still red. When a zombie dies their pupils go blank and black. They don’t stay red. Red means alive and wanting your flesh.
I stared down at the living corpse. Now I just needed to get her from the classroom to the vehicle. She was light enough to carry, but I wasn’t sure I trusted the sedative enough yet to just sling her over my shoulder and hope she didn’t wake up halfway down the sidewalk.
I pulled the rope from my belt and carefully bound her arms at her sides. I’d watched The Kid make his special “Boy Scout” knots about a dozen times, but I still wasn’t so great at it. When I tested them, though, they seemed like they’d hold for a while, at least.
Still, I wasn’t sure how to carry her. Dang, this was easier when I had Dave around. He could have taken the feet, me the shoulders, and we would have been loaded up already.
But he was gone and I had to do this alone now.
I sighed and looked around. Immediately, my eye was drawn to a cart in the corner of the room. It was covered with paint jars and other supplies and was probably normally used to disperse those things to the kids for art class.
Today it was going to disperse me a zombie.
I grabbed it and pushed it over to the body on the floor. In one satisfying sweep of a forearm, I threw the paint and other things onto the floor. They clattered and banged, sending sprays of yellow and blue and red across the once pristine white tile.
Yes, there is some fun in being in an apocalypse. You do get to play at being an avant-garde artist sometimes. For instance, the stain across the floor was a part of my Blue Period, kept forever for posterity (or until someone covered it up or the building fell down).
With a chuckle, I grabbed the zombie teacher and flopped her up over the cart on her stomach. She hung awkwardly, her feet almost touching the ground on one side and her dirty hair swinging against the floor on the other.
I got behind the cart but it wouldn’t roll no matter how hard I pushed. With a curse, I bent to check the wheels. There was some kind of locking mechanism on the dirty, damaged metal that only allowed them to turn in one direction and no matter how much I pulled on it, it was rusted in place. With a sigh, I switched sides and began backing the cart toward the door.
I edged into the hallway, with my zombie making occasional little breaths in and me grunting from the effort of pulling the cart around with dead weight. Oh and also, the burden of her body kept the fucked-up wheels from spinning freely. Basically it was a clusterfuck, but it was the best I could do.
I cursed as the back wheels caught on the divider between the classroom and the hallway and started to tug, slamming the back wheels against the low