Carver Pike - Scalp

“Yo, were these zombies like dragging their feet and stuff?” the wisecracking boy asked.

Robbie snapped. He leaped over an empty chair, grabbed the boy by the front of his T-shirt, and pulled him in close. “Do I look like I’m fucking joking?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

The boy’s eyes went wide and he shook his head. “Nah, man. Nah. You don’t.”

“It’s not a joke,” Robbie declared as he let go of the boy. He looked at the rest of the students. “Something very wrong is going on out there.”

“That’s enough,” Mrs. Price announced. “You, sir, need to sit down.”

She was talking to Robbie.

“Mrs. Price, he’s telling the truth,” Nitsy said. “We need to lock the doors.”

“Wait a second,” she replied. “I’m sure something is going on out there, but I’d be willing to bet it’s a sick joke. It might be a prank by your peers. Don’t you think that’s possible?”

Robbie turned toward her and thought about it. No, it wasn’t possible. She hadn’t seen the way Elias had come after them and how he’d fallen on his neck. She hadn’t seen the room splattered with blood.

“Room 214 is a bloodbath,” Robbie said.

Everyone fell silent. Robbie had never used the term bloodbath before, but it certainly held some sort of power over the staff and students alike.

“A bloodbath?” Mrs. Price asked.

“Let me go check that room,” Eggo said. “Robbie, I’m sure something’s going on. Let me go confirm the things you’re saying.”

“No!” Nitsy interrupted. “Are you kidding? Aren’t you even listening to us?”

“I’ll go,” one of the other male staff members announced as he pushed past Nitsy and exited out the main doors.

“Don’t let him—” Nitsy started but quieted down as she realized he was already gone.

“Nitsy, please find a seat,” Mrs. Price said. “Mr. Dale will be back in a few minutes once he’s assessed the situation. In the meantime, I think we should continue playing the film if for no other reason than to calm everyone’s nerves.”

Robbie couldn’t believe it.

There are zombies outside, and she wants to watch a fucking movie?

“Nitsy?” he said, returning to her side and taking her by the hand. “Can you believe this?”

“I want to get out of here,” she whispered.

“I said please take a seat,” Mrs. Price ordered.

Robbie pulled Nitsy toward two empty seats high up in the auditorium. As they sat down, he scanned the crowd. Most of the kids were fidgeting in their seats. He wouldn’t have expected any less. How could anyone calmly watch an ex-President speak at a time like this? While everyone else kept his or her eyes on the screen, Robbie was busy looking for potential exits. To the right, about halfway between where they were sitting and the front of the auditorium, was an emergency exit.

He wasn’t sure where it would lead, but he thought he’d seen a second floor at the cafeteria. This door might lead that way, which would be fine by him, at least he knew that part of the campus was clear. That was where he and Nitsy had experienced their first kiss.

“What are you thinking?” Nitsy asked.

“I’m thinking this is fucked,” he said. “That guy, Mr. Dale, he’s in trouble.”

The auditorium was silent except for the sound of President Kennedy delivering his speech and spectators cheering at the end of nearly every one of his sentences.

“Do you see the way he commands respect?” Mrs. Price spoke out over the sounds of the film. “Look at the way he—”

The main entrance door, the one Robbie and Nitsy had come through earlier, crashed open with a loud bang.

In stepped the large silhouette of Mr. Dale. His shadowy frame just stood there.

“Mr. Dale?” Mrs. Price asked.

Two more figures pushed through the doors and stood at his side. Robbie couldn’t help thinking they looked like the figures people cut out of paper and hung on their Christmas tree. Three featureless people, side by side, stood inside the entrance as the doors closed slowly behind them, bringing the room back into total darkness aside from the light of the movie screen.

“I see you found a couple of the students,” Mrs. Price said.

“Do you see how they’re standing?” Nitsy whispered to Robbie.

They were hunched over, their shoulders down, and their heads to the side. The same way Elias looked earlier.

“I think we should go,” he replied.

“Well, Robbie and Nitsy, do you feel better now?” Mrs. Price asked as she turned toward them.

Mrs. Price had her back to Mr. Dale and the two others when they stepped toward her.

“Mrs. Price!” Nitsy yelled. “Get away from them!”

Robbie stood and grabbed Nitsy’s hand. It was too late. The things were inside the auditorium. He’d called them zombies earlier, but that sounded too corny. Too cheesy. Too unrealistic. These things were something else.

Nitsy struggled in Robbie’s grasp, trying to pull away, trying to warn the rest of them, but it was too late.

Mr. Dale grabbed Mrs. Price’s arm and the woman gasped. It was like he’d made a sexual comment or said something she found disgusting. That was all. Nothing more than a gasp.

The kids seated near her didn’t move at all. Not at first.

Then Mrs. Price moaned. She fell to her knees and cried out. Her cry turned to a scream as her fingers reached for her scalp and dug in.

It took a second for a reaction from the students. They sat still, caught between watching a movie and trying to understand the scene unfolding in real life.

Over the voice of President Kennedy, Robbie thought he heard something. A sound like insects. Crickets maybe. Or possibly cockroaches climbing over each other. It started over by the door, but then Mr. Dale and the two people with him, two kids still shrouded in darkness, moved closer to the seated students.

And the sound amplified. It went crazy, like a million bugs riding a tidal wave that washed over the entire student body. It started close to the door but quickly made its way over the sea of seated teenagers. With it came the groans, grunts, and screams.

Robbie yanked Nitsy toward the exit door.

“Run!” he yelled.

Some of the kids near them stood and followed as they ran for the door. The sounds coming from behind them as they made their escape were those of hell. Like people being tortured for eternity. Robbie knew he’d never get those cries out of his head.

The creaking, skittering sound of insects.

The deep, guttural howls.

The metallic clatter of chairs being thrown.

The thudding of bodies tripping over each other and hitting the floor.

The screams.

As they reached the door and pushed through it, Robbie glanced back to see kids tumbling over one another and flipping onto the carpet.

One boy’s eyes ran bloody tears.

A girl clawed at her own face, raking at her cheeks with long fingernails. Deep grooves were already cut into her flesh, and she kept digging, searching for something she might be able to pull free of her own body.

Mrs. Price leaped onto the sarcastic kid Robbie had yelled at earlier. The boy reached out to them as if he expected Robbie to shoot across the auditorium, scoop him up, and carry him to safety. His outstretched arm weakened with his screams, and then it went limp.

Like the hands of hundreds of screaming spectators at a college football game, the wave started near the doors and fell toward them.

“We have to go!” Nitsy yelled, pulling him out the doors as it crashed down only a few feet away.

The last thing Robbie saw as he raced out the door was a teenage girl reaching out to him as a male student hugged her legs and climbed up her body. The boy’s hair moved. He kept climbing. The girl began to scream, and her hopeful expression changed to desperation and then, as she clawed at her own head, it changed to hunger. She reached out to him because she wanted him. It wanted him.