Shortcuts Lead To Dead Ends

The janitor hit the light switch as he left, leaving the school in darkness before locking the doors.

Frank Elliot let out his breath. This bit was always the most anxiety-inducing; would Ol’ Zeph catch him? But Ol’ Zeph had been the caretaker here before God was a student. He performed his duties on autopilot and put in the least effort to not get fired. Ol’ Zeph shuffled about like a zombie, waiting until retirement. Besides, even if he had bothered to do a quick sweep, Frank had hidden himself inside a locker. He discovered it was possible to do so thanks to Ryan McDaniel, the big name in these hallowed halls. Frank opened the door. He fell out like a child’s hidden dirty laundry bursts free of the closet.

The corridor lay in blueish shadows. Pale moonlight poured in through the square windows of the closed classroom doors. The vertical blinds cut into the light, casting shapes like prison bars.

Frank got up and dusted himself off, shaking off the kenopsia that settled over him like dust. He pulled out his thick, unabridged, hardcover copy of Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ from the locker’s top shelf. Frank made sure to keep it horizontal at all times. He breathed in the still air of the school, then set off at a trot for Mrs Romero’s science lab.

The lab door swung open, exhaling its musty breath. The odour of books, chemicals, wooden benches, and rubber stoppers wafted out.

Frank shut the door behind him and headed for the lab bench in the far corner. He set down ‘The Stand’ and then glanced at the fume hood, wrinkling his nose – the damn thing took forever to warm up. Instead, the boy set up on the open bench, getting the necessary racks. He pulled glassware off the shelves, from an enormous 2 litres to an adorable 5 millilitres. He got the bunsen burner going and boiled some water while he connected the rest.

Plastic tubes and rubber hoses snaked this way and that. The connectors crossed between condensers, separatory funnels, and flasks. Magnetic stirrer beads twizzled around like chemical ballet dancers. Graduated cylinders dotted the bench. The flame flickered and sighed, the smell of gas in the air.

Frank nodded at his setup. Most of the equipment was old and chipped, but it did the job. He’d asked his parents to buy his lab equipment, and they looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. So, instead, he resorted to “borrowing” Mrs Romero’s stuff. He told his mum and dad he spent these late nights with ‘the boys, doing sports’. Mum and Dad, delighted that their little dork was finally fitting in, looked on, smiling. And that little lie wouldn’t hurt because once this project concluded, Frank would fit in. Nobody would ever stand out again.

In a zombie horde, every zombie was equal.

Sure, sacrificing his brains – the only natural talent fate had gifted him – would be a loss. But he would fit in! He’d be one of them, part of the crowd! He wouldn’t be Frank Elliot, the nerdy loner. He’d be Kid Zombie #283, belonging to the swarm.

Frank opened his hollowed-out King book, feeling warm and dreamy from the love in his heart.

Glowing shades of purple and green bloomed from within, illuminating the school’s lab. Inside, Petri dishes grew something on their agar. The incubating things had grown so much on several plates that they pushed their lids askew. On dry ice to the side, glass bottles sported labels with warnings and exclamation marks.

Frank smiled at his babies. It wouldn’t be long, now. He snapped on his gloves and plucked pieces out the way his contemporaries chose sweets at the pick ’n’ mix stand. He got to work.

Steam hissed, and liquids boiled. Condensed droplets ran down the glass sides. Samples sizzled, reagents frothed, flames flared – black, on occasion. The smell was somehow sweet and sour, fresh and stagnant at the same time. The sound was like an aquarium’s collection of fishes, all releasing their dying breaths at once. Test tubes filled and emptied. Colours exploded. Black, tar-like fluids blinked into translucence with a click of the fingers. Taps opened and closed, releasing pent-up liquids from their spouts. With a whistle like a mouse’s scream and a puff of static smoke, the reaction finished.

Frank stared with wild eyes, a look of pure ecstasy on his face. He killed the flame.

The iridescent fluid – two colours at once – swirled inside the burette. The liquid snaked, coiled, and twisted like a parasite in the brain. The piping to this graduated tube had turned from red brick to glowing grey.

It was a stroke of genius if Frank could say so himself. He’d gotten the idea from reading about nuclear bombs: a primary and secondary stage. Nukes had fissile material – like uranium-235 – and a trigger mechanism. Frank had gone for a two-parter, too. He’d engineered it to kill the subject before resurrecting them as an undead. Hands shaking, Frank uncorked his empty flask and plugged it into the bottom of the funnel. He opened the tap.

The purple-green ooze trickled through in fits and spurts before flooding out. It splattered against the flask’s sides and globbed at the bottom in watery chunks.

Frank hadn’t yet decided how he was going to release his virus. He’d made it so that, once exposed to the air, it aerosolised and spread, seeking subjects. He needed to time it well because ten minutes without a host and his little pets would die. Oh well, that was a job for future Frank. Right now, he needed to clean up and—

As he took the flask to cap it before fumes could escape, the long neck slipped through his sweaty fingers.

‘Oops.’

The flask hit the linoleum and detonated, sending glass shards and gloop splattering. The virus splashed across the floor and up the legs of the benches. The impact sent droplets pattering over the walls. A few spatters even reached the ceiling. But the vast majority went on to Frank himself – down his shirt and up his legs, across his face and into his mouth.

Frank stood there, frozen, too panicked to panic, his hands in position as though he still held the flask. Already, he could sense his little guys doing their job. It felt like the worst flu ever amplified by a thousand. The back of his throat burned, his sinuses bulged, and his eyes watered. Nausea rippled through his gut as something started to swim inside him. His brain turned to cotton wool. It dulled his thoughts, slowed his thinking, drugging him.

Well, that was that, then. Frank should have used the fume hood. Why had he taken a shortcut? Why had— Wait, did that explain his attempt with friends, too? Had he tried to avoid the test of getting to know others by stripping everyone of their humanity? His eyebrows rose, and he uttered his final syllable: ‘Huh.’

The room tilted to one side like Frank were a passenger aboard the Titanic.

Frank tried to hold on to the corner of the lab bench but swiped it free of equipment as he flopped to the floor. He lay there amongst the wreckage as his life faded and something else took up house behind his eyes.

A short while later, the shell that had once housed Frank Elliot shuffled to its feet, moaning.

It set off at a shamble, not as part of the crowd but as the singular zombie in town.