Chapter Four: Chorus of the Dead

Written by Raymond Du

Derrick sat in the hot gymnasium, among the large crowd of confused and nervous students of Central High School. A feeling of dread had filled him as he looked around the gym room, wondering what exactly was going on in the school. He listened carefully to his fellow students chattering around him, trying to pinpoint any conversations that might have offered any information. Unfortunately, everyone was just about as confused as he was. He watched the faculty members whispering among themselves at a distance, by the exits, but they were much too far to hear. He couldn't help but feel sick as he looked at their distraught faces. He heard someone whisper his name, and broke his attention away from the faculty members’ discussions.

“Derrick! Do you have any clue what’s going on?” Said Michael, one of his classmates.

“Not really,” he replied lazily.

He wasn’t very much in the mood to talk. Just a few hours ago he was sleeping in his advisory, before waking up to the voice on the announcement demanding all of the staff and students to report to the gymnasium immediately. The gym was close to his class, they were both in the basement so he was able to groggily make his way down there before all of the other students crowded the hall.

He listened to the conversations around him again, focusing his attention back on the teachers. Apparently, from what he could make out from their conversation, some kid was really sick and was throwing up all over the nurse‘s office, but he didn’t understand why it would require all two-thousand or so of them to crowd up in the gym room… “Maybe we’ll be let out of school early…” He took a deep breath, the air was heavy and smelled foul, a stench of something rotting. He heard a scream and looked behind him, one of the staff members standing next to the exit was seemingly attacked by a person… Only it wasn’t a person, for even at a distance he could see that it’s skin was visibly rotting away, and it’s eyes were cold and dead.

“What the hell is going on?” He thought to himself, sitting in shock as the whole school erupted in panic and students began screaming and running away from the creature.

“Is that a zombie? There’s no such things as zombies! This can’t be possible…”

More zombies began spilling into the gym room from the back, as he sat there in shock. He watched as a few of the faculty members tried to fend off the creatures, only to be overwhelmed by the growing mob of them.

He began to move, pushing through the crowd of confused, panicking students. There were too many people, and the whole of the gymnasium was in disarray. Thinking quickly, he broke away from the crowd and ran to the door leading back upstairs. He ran quickly towards the nearest room he could find, the robotics lab, which was directly down the hall. He was close to reaching the door when he noticed that there was a zombie at the end of the hallway opposite of him. He unintentionally let out a slight yelp that alerted the creature, which also began to race towards the robotics room. Realizing that he wouldn’t make it there in time, he made a sharp right turn and ran down towards the first corridor, where his chemistry lab room was. The zombie gave chase, letting out a terrifying moan as it ran as fast as it’s dead legs could carry it after him.

Reaching the door of his class, he opened it and quickly slammed the door shut behind him as the zombie rammed into it. The door wasn’t the sturdiest, but it would do. Derrick’s heart was beating quickly, his adrenaline was pumping as he breathed heavily and sweated profusely. His shirt was soaked in sweat, not from the running, but more from the fear alone. He quickly locked the door and pushed as many desks in front of it as he could, then walked over to the clogged sink in the middle of the room and rinsed the sweat off of his face, it quickly flooded over and onto the floor as he dozed off for a moment, lost in thought. “Is the whole school infested with these things? These zombies…?” Noticing the mess he made, he quickly turned the sink off. The sound of the zombie’s raspy breathing outside of the room soon subsided as he heard the noise of sneakers quickly pounding against the floor, people were running down the hall, unknowingly taking the zombie’s attention away from him.

He looked around the room for anything he could use, in case the zombies were to break in, and found a few sturdy metal rods about a meter in length, he grabbed one. Foraging for more things that might come in handy, he found many chemistry equipments that were of no use to him, such as Bunsen burners, glass vials, a jar containing a piece of sodium, and containers of various solvents. He sat down and groaned, he was probably going to die, with no food or clean water to drink. Either he would starve to death in this room, or test his luck and make a run for it, assuming the zombies don’t break in first… He checked his phone, the signal was dead. “Oh great, everything’s going terribly wrong. This can’t be really happening!” He closed his eyes for only a moment and quickly fell asleep thinking, “I’m going to die…”

Not long after he fell asleep, he was awoken by the sound of screaming coming from outside. His stomach churned, he was still living in a nightmare... He slowly got up, realizing someone was probably being murdered by those ravenous zombies right outside of the room. Carefully approaching the door to check, he saw a large group of zombies outside, well over ten of them, tearing away at someone on the floor who was obviously trying to find refuge in one of the chemistry labs by his own. Letting out a fearful squeal at the sight alerted the zombies of his presence and they quickly bombarded the door. He ran back to the far corner of the room, realizing that the door couldn’t possibly withstand the force of the zombies pushing against it.

The door gave in and swung open, knocking the desks aside as the zombies spilled into the room, falling over one another. Derrick’s pale hands gripped the metal rod hard, but he realized that it was definitely impossible to fend off so many zombies physically, especially because of how weak and skinny he was. The zombies stood up and hastily began to run toward him, but they slipped and fell on the pool of water on the floor. Looking at the flooded sink and water on the floor, where the zombies were scrambling to get back up, he remembered the large piece of sodium, stored in the jar of kerosene. Remembering that sodium reacts violently with water, he quickly grabbed the jar, smashed it open, the kerosene spilling all over the table, and threw the sodium into the puddle of water where the zombies lay. He took cover behind a table and covered his ears… And then came a crackling sound, like that of thunder, and a large explosion…

It worked as planned, peeking over the table, he saw the wrangled remains of zombies splattered across the room. His ears still ringing from the explosion, he got up and knew that he had to move quickly, knowing that the sound from the explosion would attract more zombies to him… His clothes were covered in dust and blood, his vision was blurred. He began moving towards the door when two figures appeared within the still dusty room, Derrick held onto the metal rod tightly, getting ready to strike at the shadowy figures. Then a voice called out to him, “Derrick, is that you?”

“Oh hey there, guys…” Replied Derrick. The dust finally settling, he could now see their faces. He recognized Demetri, the senior from robotics, who used to tutor him for physics. The other student he didn’t know personally, but recognized him as the captain of the famous wrestling team, Ricardo. He was both athletic and smart, yet he was still known throughout the school as a humble and caring person.

“What happened here? Are you okay?” Asked Ricardo, concerned.

“Yeah, are you okay?” Asked Demetri. “Did you cause the explosion? The noise probably attracted the attention of more zombies…”

“I’m okay. And yeah, I know… Sorry about that. But there was no way I was going to fend off that mob of zombies with this pole…” Derrick replied.

“It’s cool,” replied Demetri. “We have to think of something quick… The zombies are probably making their way towards us now. We don’t want to be cornered in this room. Especially with the door half broken.”

Derrick quickly replied, “We should try to leave the school, maybe? I need to find out what my fam-”

“I don’t think we should leave the building. I’m sorry… I was outside for a moment and it was…” Ricardo stopped mid sentence, silence fell between the three of them.

“We need to worry about ourselves first. We need to go… Now!“ Demetri yelled, as he began to run out of the room.

He was right, zombies could be heard coming down the stairs, even at a distance. It must’ve been a lot for the cries of the dead to be heard from that far. At least twenty or thirty, maybe even more! Derrick stood there, a look of dread on his face. Ricardo grabbed his arm and pulled him slightly to get him moving. They quickly ran down the halls, reaching the middle corridor, Demetri taking a sharp right turn and going running by the robotics room while yelling back to Derrick and Ricardo, “Keep going, we need to go upstairs! The roof would be the safest place to go, the robotics room won’t be able to barricade us from the zombies for long.

Reaching the stairway, he stopped abruptly. Demetri’s eyes widened as he simply yelled “run back!” Over ten zombies were quickly making their way slowly down the stairs. They turned around and ran towards the third corridor. Derrick glanced back at the growing horde of zombies behind them. Looking forward again, he saw a zombie walking out from the corner of the corridor. Demetri quickly lifted his crossbow shaped weapon up towards the zombie’s neck and pulled the trigger. Surprisingly, two buzz saws ejected outwards, which he used to quickly cut down the zombie in their path. They quickly turned the corner but was forced to back into a corner when they saw more a few zombies coming towards them from the stairway.

“Shit there’s no way out of this!” Exclaimed Derrick.

“I’m not going down without a fight!” Yelled Ricardo, adrenaline pumping through him, he lifted the heavy sledgehammer and slammed it into the skull of an approaching zombie with ease. The vile creature crumpled to the floor as he quickly swung it at the next zombie straight downwards, into the skull where it lodged deeply into it. Another zombie lunged at him while he was trying to pull the hammer out and was intercepted but Demetri, who ran the saw blades across mouth of the zombie, cutting the upper portion of it’s head right off. Derrick was amazed at how easily Ricardo was able swing the sledgehammer around but he knew that they would be outnumbered and overwhelmed soon, especially with the mob of zombies approaching from the other two corridors and the ones coming from down the hall of the first corridor. They were cornered… Derrick backed into a door as he watched Ricardo kick the zombie loose, off of the sledgehammer and into another zombie behind it. He attempted to open the door, but it was locked. He banged on it hard, the door was very large and hefty, probably impossible for them to open. He peered into the small window on the door, it was dark. He began hopelessly pulling on the door knob again.

He turned around, the two of his companions were still fighting the few zombies that made it to their small corner. The roaring moan of the zombies - the chorus of the dead - was growing louder as the zombies approached from both sides, forcing Ricardo and Demetri back. He panicked, they were trapped and they will be violently torn apart by the large mob of zombies. Ricardo looked back at Derrick and yelled “hurry! Try to open the door, we don’t have much time.“ While Demetri yelled “I can’t keep mowing down these zombies. Damn thing runs on batteries!”

Out of complete desperation he banged on the door again and cried “Anyone in there?! Maybe…?” His voice trailed off, “oh God, I’m going to die. This is hopeless.” His legs weakened at the thought of dying and he leaned against the door for support. Surprisingly, it abruptly swung open and he quickly stumbled into the dark room…