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And then the thwack was joined by another sound.

“Ehnrrrr!”

I let go of the cart, pulled my 9mm out, and spun toward the loud burst of nonsensical sound.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered.

My gun started to shake. Standing at the end of the hallway were two zombies. Little kid zombies in uniforms. A boy in short khaki pants and a white dress shirt, and a girl in a khaki skirt with the same white shirt.

They were filthy, covered in sludge and sticky blood. The girl zombie’s face had half rotted off, revealing some of the teeth beneath her cheek. The boy’s arm was gone at the shoulder and he hunched unnaturally in the other direction, like he couldn’t adjust to the misbalanced weight.

Remember that scene in The Shining with the twins where they want the little boy to play with them? Forever.

Yeah, I was having flashbacks, especially when both of them turned their heads sideways at the same time and sniffed the air together.

I turned to see if I had an escape route the other way, but what was at the other end of the hall was actually worse. Three zombies. One normal zombie, probably another teacher, judging by the brightly colored soccer ball tie he had once worn. It was now just a knot at his throat with tattered threads at the end (the shirt collar that had once held it was long gone).

But the other two were something different. Not children, not normals.

These two were bigger and they had a brightness to their red eyes that spoke of some kind of remnants of intelligence.

These two were bionics.

Building relationships is building business. Also you sometimes need other people in order to kill all the motherfucking zombies.

I swiveled from one side to another, but all my mind could think of was, now what? Dave’s voice echoed in my head with the same thing he always said to me when the going got tough.

Stay calm.

I drew a deep breath and leveled my 9mm at the little kid zombies first.

What? They’re smaller and easier to take care of. Also, I was fucking terrified of the bionics and I wanted to just ignore that issue as long as I could.

Of course the second I pulled off the first shot and dropped the little girl zombie, the little boy started jogging toward me. Behind me the other three roared with blood (er, brain) lust and as I spun toward them, they started after me, too.

“Shit!” I shouted as I made for the classroom I’d just left.

Unfortunately, the cart with my unconscious teacher zombie was half-blocking the door and I couldn’t close it. The closed door wouldn’t offer me much protection, but at least it was some kind of barrier between me and the attacking group that now gathered at the entrance, staring at me, turning their heads to the side like confused dogs.

All three regular zombies, including the child, ignored the cart and just started crawling over it to get to me. On top, my unconscious zombie chick whined in protest about the extra weight squashing her back… literally. But the zombies didn’t care, zombies never do, they just kept reaching out toward me, grunting and groaning.

But the bionics were different. They hesitated at the cart, staring at the unconscious zombie, then looking past her at me. I’m not going to say that their eyes reflected really clear thoughts on what I was doing… or even what they should do in response, but fuck man, they were certainly a lot more lucid about the situation than the others.

I backed up against the wall as I stared at them staring at me. The windows were behind me and beyond them the yard and escape, but they were the safety kind of window that tilted in so that the kids who were all amped up on sugar wouldn’t crawl out during class. By the time I figured out the safety releases, I was pretty much fucked.

The two bionics looked at each other now. The one in front had to crane his neck a little to do it and when he did I sucked in a breath of shock. The world slowed to half time and all I could do was stare.

There, on his neck, was a brand. Three dots and a line.

Kevin