shrieks, and suddenly drumsticks fall to the floor and there is a harsh, metallic whine of the microphone as it falls off the stand and onto the stage.
The zombies!
I turn, looking, to see the door open wider than ever. One of the chains has broken, falling to the floor, lying at some zombie’s feet. They push, surging, skin gray and green as arms reach through the space between the straining gym doors, teeth yellow and bloody, eyes black as the midnight sky above them as they stare at us hungrily.
“Phil,” I gasp and he lets go of my hand. “Phil?”
“Here,” he says, replacing his hand with the neck of a champagne bottle.
“What’s this for?”
He smashes the fat end against the coffee table in reply, but the bottle’s so heavy and the table’s so flimsy, the table just falls apart, knocking plastic glasses and blue napkins and glittery confetti everywhere.
I chuckle and say, “I see what you’re getting at.”
I kneel down, hold the neck of the bottle in my hand and smash the fat part against the varnished gym floor. It bounces up, harmlessly, but I smash it down again, harder. Harder, until it breaks.
He does the same until we’re standing there, side by side, clutching our shattered champagne bottles. “I always wanted to do that,” I tell him.
“Me too,” he says, turning to me, and he’s breathing heavier, eyes wide.
He waits a beat and says, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I chuckle. “Not inventing a cure for the common zombie bite before New Year’s Eve?”
He nods. “That, and… that I waited so long to tell you I cared about you.”
“Better late than never,” I say, voice trembling, hands trembling. He sees and reaches for mine with his free hand.
We square off like that, hand in hand, champagne shards up, as the last chains break and the gym doors swing open.
They swarm through, single mindedly, rushing at us like a slow moving wave across a flat, wide beach. Vaguely I hear the other kids screaming, and the squelch of a guitar as someone picks it up.
I look, just for a second, and see a single band member, standing alone on the stage, strumming his guitar until the gentle strains of “Auld Lang Syne” fill the air.
I smile and, by the time I turn back, the horde is upon us. I raise my arm to stab out at them, but it’s no use. There are so many of them, where do you start? I drop the bottle and it clatters to the floor. They sweep Phil away from me, his hand tearing from mine as the first zombie tears into my flesh with jagged, ragged teeth.
I scream out, but I’m so scared, heart pounding so hard, I barely feel the tearing of flesh and splashing of blood as I’m attacked.
And then another bites into me, and one more, then another, until all I hear is their chewing, and my blood spilling on the gym floor in great, clotted clumps.
And then they move on, shuffling along as I lay there, staring at the confetti on the floor, and Phil’s face, blood splattered like mine, a few feet away. His eyes are closed, his red hair mattered where they’ve torn off his ear.
I want him to open his eyes, to smile at me one last time, to wish me “Happy New Year,” but his days of smiling are over.
Mine, too, I suppose.
The zombies surge around us and I listen above their clomping and shuffling and growling as the single band member strums his guitar. “Should old acquaintance…” I sing along as he strums, quietly, slowly, as if just for me, “… be forgot, and never brought to mind…”
And then I hear them, footsteps on the stage, and the sound of his guitar squelching as he hoists it, smashing it into one of them until it stops.
And the guitar goes silent, and the munching begins, and I close my eyes, blood boiling, skin twitching, body growing cold as I struggle to remember the rest of the words: “In the days of auld lang syne…”
* * * * *
About the Author
Rusty Fischer specializes in seasonal short stories for the YA paranormal audience. Read more of Rusty’s FREE stories at www.rushingtheseason.com. Happy Holidays!!!
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