The Zombie Zone

Fire alarms blared. Red light brightened and dimmed. Screams and shouts were mere whistles in the background. A constant static of crackling flames and bending, breaking metal superseded everything. All of this fell onto the numbed mind. Blurred and muffled by rattled consciousness.

The lights and plane crash weren't what brought Theo to. The searing pain in the back of his head did. It thrummed throughout his skull. He lay on the floor sideways, sprawled underneath debris of brick and glass.

Theo pushed up carefully, so that any loose pieces fell over and off. He brushed away what he could, but the moment he turned his neck, a spike of pain made him flinch. It came from the same spot that woke him up; the back of his head. He gingerly reached around and dabbed his finger on the spot. Wet, warm, and painful. He checked his fingertips; fresh blood.

Evaluating his surroundings, he found himself in the lobby area by the stairs landing. The lights were out, which left only the emergency red lights and growing flames for visibility. Theo couldn't see his backpack or sunglasses anywhere; it was more than likely buried under rubble.

The hallway where the jet crashed was completely demolished. Only a segment of the body hit the building, and now laid diagonal in it. An amalgamated pile of torn metal and fire remained. Smoke rose up and out of the opening. One of the wings had broken off on impact and impaled the building side at a haphazardous angle. Some sprinklers let out a cascade of water to suppress the fire. However, others were inoperational.

The side of the jet was shredded open by the impact. Theo could see inside where the passenger seating was. The thing that caught his attention made him wish he couldn't. A passenger was strapped into their seat and covered in flames. Their skin peeled away and exposed bone and muscle due to the heat. Their legs and waist were feet away from their strapped-in torso. Their innards hung like a curtain of viscera from the seat.

They moaned and snapped their teeth while reaching their hands out towards Theo.

"What the fuck..." Theo couldn't blink or look away. The melting person snarled. A disgust he's never felt before lurched him forward. He held back the urge to hurl, but kept his sight glued onto this morbid horror, "How are you alive?! How?!"

The person, if it even was one, snarled again. It pressed against the straps and ignored the flames claiming more of its skin and hair. Soon, it'd lose all of its identity as a human and become a true monster.

"This can't be happening..." Theo's mind, wrecked by pain and disbelief, wrestled with sanity. He stood up, and quickly checked himself for any more wounds. His limbs were intact, and unlike the creature in the plane, his body parts were all together.

One step and he fumbled. His whole body wobbled even when still. The world temporarily blurred. He wasn't fully recovered from the hit to the head.

He tried again, and this time braced against the wall. He shuffled along, battled his equilibrium, and avoided eye contact with the creature on the plane. Theo limped past the furniture of the lobby and made it to the spiral stairs. Below, he witnessed another nightmare.

Teeth gnashing into flesh. The corpse of an unfamiliar professor. Blood and guts spilled across the scene. Three human-like creatures committed to cannibalism.

Theo fell backwards against a lobby chair. He'd been backing up, failing to process the gore. His stomach lightened, and unable to resist, he puked. The burning in his throat meant little in his panicked state. He couldn't control his breathing anymore, and needed to run. He gazed down the second hallway in conjunction with the other lobby. It was darkened from the knocked out power, but the emergency red lights helped show it was empty.

Theo ran, and immediately tripped over his own feet. His equilibrium was winning the battle. He clambered to a wall and climbed back to his feet. The water from the sprinklers made the floor slippery, too.

The segment of the jet settled more. It tilted and caused more of the ceiling to rain down. Theo kneeled and covered his head. After the debris covered him in a light coating, he heard more movement from behind. Things fell out of the jet opening, like luggage. Two of those things were corpses. They hit the tiled floor with sick thuds, and soon thereafter, made it to their feet like nothing happened. The two stewards, in the same undead state, shambled forward. They suffered from torn and melted skin, and burnt clothing. When they spotted Theo, they let out gargling growls.

"No, no, no!" Theo pushed forward. His brain thrummed in its case. His heart paced faster than his stumbles. He cussed each time his body refused to move right.

Theo slipped and crashed, but so did the monsters. They'd land and crack their skulls open. Not even the hard hits kept them down. Theo couldn't let it do the same to him.

Slip. Door.

Slide. Cuss. Floor.

Slip. Catch. Growls. Persist.

The grunts and hisses from the monsters sounded louder and louder. They were gaining ground on Theo's frantic and hindered movement.

Theo threw his body into the first door at the end of the hall. He fell through into one of the stairwells and narrowly hit his head on the bottom step of the landing's railing. He scampered on all fours up the steps in front of him. The monsters forced their way in and lunged at him. They grabbed his legs. Theo instinctively mule kicked as hard as he could to knock them away. It worked, and he ascended to the switchback landing.

Theo curled up his legs and switched around to gauge his pursuers. They failed to walk up stairs. Poorly placed footing meant they fell face first and rolled to the bottom. Theo didn't move, but instead watched with morbid curiosity. The human-like creatures drunkenly stood and tried the stairs again, only to fall once more.

"They can't climb stairs," Theo accepted the windfall. He slid back against a wall, and watched them fail some more. He took the time to steady his nerves and breathing.

After their third fall, the monsters gave up and moved in circles. One of them found the ledge of the downward stairs. It fell to the bottom, with sickening thwacks and breaks along the way. Theo listened carefully for a moment, and eventually heard it moving and groaning. The tumble meant nothing.

"Seriously? You're seriously zombies?" Theo couldn't find any other way to refer to them. Unlike the plane zombie, these were very human-like. They were burned by fire and scraped by metal, but most of them were intact. A detail that stood out were the eyes. Their pupils took on odd shapes that reminded Theo of an atomic symbol, or like when AI programs messed up pupils in their drawings.

Theo stood up. He stretched to loosen muscles, and paced to test his balance. Better than before. Distant metallic twangs and rumbles challenged the integrity of the building.

"I need to get out of here. Sitting around isn't safe," Theo told himself. He needed to hear the reinforcement.

'Miss me?'

Her voice rang like an alarm in his head. Theo opened his phone and started to text Susan and Hank, "Are you guys okay?"

No immediate response. In the meantime, Theo went online to check socials. However, to his dismay, the internet did not load. A second window popped up to enter the password for the college wi-fi.

"Oh, come on! The one time I need it..." Theo cursed his lack of foresight. As well as a lack of data. It never seemed important.

Theo opened his contacts and called his father. The extended ringing helped block out the zombie groans. However, with each ring, Theo grew antsier. Until it went to voicemail. It pissed him off, but he found his voice when it beeped, "Dad! Hey, I-I'm...uh, on campus right now. I'm okay. I'm a little hurt, but okay. Something is happening here that...is hard...to explain. J-Just give me a call when you get a chance."

Not the greatest thing to leave on somebody's voicemail, and it only put into perspective how shaken he was.

Ding!

Theo received a message from Susan. He swiped it open and read, "I'm fine! We're in the student center. What happened? Campus staff are keeping us in the food court, and angry people are banging on the doors. Are you outside?"

Theo tried to keep his reply short, "I'm in the science building. It was hit by a plane, but I'm okay. Things are weird. There are..."

Zombies. He wanted to put it, but he knew skepticism would make the discussion difficult. He sent an alternative, "...people acting weird. Violent. Stay inside."

After another minute, Susan responded, "Jesus! Please, find somewhere safe. Everybody's calling 911. Hunker down if it's too hard and just wait."

While reading her text, Theo heard a couple yells from somewhere in the building. They echoed to him like the shrieks of the damned. Easier said than done, he thought, "Yeah, I'll try to make my way to you."

"I'll be waiting. Were you with Professor Hanover?" Susan asked.

'You're pitiful.'

Theo's spiteful words drilled into him with the unfair weight of guilt. Was Hanover still alive or in danger?

Theo couldn't evacuate until he knew, "No, but I can see where she is. Maybe get us both over there."

"Please be careful!" Susan's concern made Theo smile.

"I'll be fine," he leaned on easing her worry. Whether he believed it or not didn't matter.

Theo mapped out the building - a big cube essentially - and figured he could use higher up hallways. Another stairwell could be found in the opposite corner of the building, and as long as it was still intact, could be used to descend right to Hanover's classroom.

He needed to seek a weapon. Theo immediately saw the red casing for the fire extinguisher behind the zombie. Instead of fighting an infectious monster and trying to unclip the extinguisher, he simply went to the next floor and grabbed the one from there. It was one of the smaller models; easier to carry, but not enough heft for fighting things. He hoped for the best.

Next, he peered through the stairwell door's glass panel. The adjacent hall was steeped in darkness, and the connecting hall saw flames eating it alive. Poor phrasing, Theo thought.

He cautiously opened the door and peeled out. The sprinklers worked here, but barely kept the fire at bay. The hallway wasn't infested, but near the front end was a zombie, unbothered by the nearby flames. It chowed on a motionless student. Theo averted his eyes. He nimbly moved down the unlit hallway.

That meant zombies weren't restricted to the lower floors. During his jog, Theo checked any room he passed by. Based on the abandoned school supplies, whoever was here already left. Theo didn't come across any other survivor. The absentees and call outs accounted for the small number of occupied rooms. Still, Theo never felt so alone and small. He hated the feeling.

Theo came upon the employee access stairwell. The door was ajar. It was the farthest stairwell from the plane crash. He opted to take it to the second floor. While heading down, he noticed a slice of sunlight coming in at the bottom. People must have been through here to evacuate the building. Theo kept it in mind as an escape route, in case the front exits were unavailable.

Theo stared nervously into the second floor's abyss. The red lighting did nothing for the shadows, where the zombies might be. The fire from the jet crash only played tricks on his eyes; it made the shadows dance. Based on his mental mapping, Hanover's room was out and to the right. It wasn't very far.

Theo entered the hallway. The metal click of the door made him wince. The sudden lurch of a zombie in a pilot's uniform, right outside the door, made him jump. Its grubby hands seized him.

Theo freaked out and yelled, "Let go! Let go, asshole!"

It didn't register or care, and pulled itself into the stairwell with a gaping maw. Teeth stained by blood and littered with flesh only intensified Theo's fears. He pulled back enough for both of them to meet the landing's railing. Theo put the extinguisher up into its face, and he heard its teeth gnaw on the casing. He rotated around until the zombie was lined up with the railing. Theo then used his leg strength to shove with everything he had. The zombie tipped over, its grasp slipped from him and the extinguisher, and it plummeted to the bottom.

Theo fought for oxygen, and his body buzzed with adrenaline. He quickly checked below - the damn thing crawled about and hissed. The fall didn't kill it.

Theo slumped over, elbows braced on his knees. He heaved in breaths, and felt his clothes cling to his sweaty body.

"Fuck you..." Theo spat.

A phone cackled out a ringtone in the echoey stairwell. Theo's heart stopped for a few seconds, and he made a yelp he didn't know he could make. After the initial shock, he quickly took it out and read the caller ID 'Dad'.

Theo answered, "Hello?!"

"Theodore? Thank goodness," the aged voice pierced Theo's already shaken nerves. It brought on a relief like no other, "Where are you at? What's going on?"

"Dad, it's crazy. First a plane flew into the building, and then I woke up to a bunch of people eating one another, and I've been running and hiding, and I think they're zombies, and it's hard to..."

"Woah, woah, easy, son. Take a breath," Theodore's dad, Jay, hushed. Theodore realized how hectic he sounded, and took in a deep breath. Jay picked it up, "Now, what's this about a plane?"

Theodore took the next few minutes explaining everything since his black out. His dad followed it with, "Goddamn zombies, eh? That explains the mailman's bad mood this morning."

"I don't think this is a time for jokes, dad," Theo said, baffled.

"You're way too deadpan for any of this to be a joke. That's how I know you're not lying to me," Jay sniffed and coughed.

A bit quirky, but that was dad. Theo asked, "How is it out there?"

"Not a one in sight. I heard a bunch of police and ambulance sirens this morning. That might explain it. I'm not seeing anything on the news yet," Jay said. Theo could hear the television switching channels in the background.

"Great, then what do I do?" Theo still wanted to find Hanover. For all he knew, she evacuated with everyone else.

"Hide, keep your head down, and bash some skulls only when necessary," Jay made it sound so casual. "Don't be a hero, Theodore. Leave that to the police and firefighters when they arrive."

Theo could hear the father's concern in that line, "Yeah, I know."

"Unless it scores you a girlfriend," the other boot dropped.

"Dad..."

"Look, focus on staying safe. A hiding spot, a group of people, whatever. Then lock yourselves in and wait for rescue. Stay calm, and don't take risks. Simple and easy," Jay drilled in.

His father's calm and collected instructions helped steady Theo. They were so obvious. Theo assured, "I'm going to head to the student center. They have a medical center there."

"Perfect. I'll keep mom pacified until more details come out. If things aren't crazy here, I'll try to head that way and pick you up."

"If they are crazy, you stay locked in."

"Yes, sir," Jay assured. Theo heard an opening of a firearm chamber. In his mind, he envisioned his dad prepping his hunting rifle. Jay then said, "I love you, son. We'll see each other soon."

Theo rolled his eyes, "Love you, too."

The call ended there, but Theo wished he could keep him. He knew his battery wouldn't last that long. Without his backpack and charger, it'd be a waste.

The student center was his goal, but he needed to check on Hanover and the rest of the building for survivors. He rhetorically asked his dad for forgiveness. He cautiously opened the stairwell door, received no new zombie, and then stepped out.

Down the hall, the red lighting flashed on a few unmoving people on the floor. Some doors were wide open, and acted as blank voids. It was far worse on the second floor compared to the third. Theo stayed attentive to the floors, walls, and corners. The jet compromised the structure, and the intensity of the fire didn't help. The urge to move quickly but carefully didn't go well together. He kept his back to the wall, and stepped side-to-side. Each of his senses were being overworked. Luckily, there were no more undead between him and Hanover.

When he reached the auditorium door, he turned the handle and pushed. The door barely budged open; something was in the way. Theo also heard a frightened whimper from right behind the barrier.

"Help...please..." Hanover, with barely any energy, called out.

"Hanover? It's Theo. Let me in," Theo hissed through the small crack. He kept peeking over his shoulder.

"Theo? Oh, Theo...there's a beam in the way. I can't move it on my own..." Hanover's voice quivered.

"I'll push," Theo said. As he did, whatever blocked the door started to slide. It barely did, though, and chips of bricks tumbled from above. Theo kept his head tucked, and slipped in once enough space was made.

Hanover pulled on the broken beam to help Theo in. However, too much movement caused some wall to crumble over. Theo and Hanover sidestepped the cave in. They narrowly avoided the crushing weight.

Half of the auditorium was caved in, due to the destruction from the jet's wing. Hanover's desk, blackboard, projector, and school teaching tools were either broken or scattered about in the mess. Theo didn't give it too much thought, since Hanover immediately cried out in pain and twisted into a sitting position against the fallen beam.

"Hanover, what's..." Theo kneeled, and when his knee touched the ground, he dipped into a liquid substance. A deep crimson of blood shimmered in the red light.

Hanover sat properly, and displayed a large gash along her thigh. Theo didn't dare touch it. The professor, covered in dirt and sweat, answered, "Thrown into the desk. Ripped me open. What's happening out there?"

"A plane crashed into the building. I don't know much else," Theo shrugged. It was more prevalent to get them out.

"Good lord...I'm so glad you're okay," Hanover laid a hand on Theo's knee. Though she was trying to offer comfort, the tears welling up made it apparent she was the one who needed it.

"I'll be fine. Just a bump to the head," Theo downplayed his injury. Hers was far worse, "We need to get you help. Do you have any kind of medical, bandage stuff here?"

"Not here," Hanover sounded exhausted.

Theo needed to act fast. He searched and found a pen on the floor. He removed his jacket and grabbed a bit of his shirt, ready to rip, "We need a tourniquet. Give me a second."

"Wait - use my blazer. It's already ripped..." Hanover worked her outerwear off. She handed it over, and Theo found the tear on the sleeve. He ripped it apart, and then used it to wrap around Hanover's leg above the wound. In conjunction with the pen, and setting the tourniquet a few inches above the wound, he cinched the wrap. He tied the pen securely with more fabric.

The two of them took a moment. Applying the tourniquet brought a lot more pain to Hanover. Theo couldn't help but stare at the haggard woman. She stared at her wound, and then forward, and then the wound again. She finally asked, "I heard noises out there. People screaming, and then something growling at the door."

Theo, a man without finesse, decided to be frank, "You might not believe me, but...that was probably a zombie."

The absurdity momentarily cleared up Hanover's disorientation, "Zombie?"

"Yeah, like 'eating people' zombies. And 'not dying when on fire' zombies."

Hanover's processing declined when her exhaustion returned. She slowly lowered her head, and Theo wasn't sure what to do. He glanced about - aside from scissors and the projector screen, there weren't too many things he saw as useful.

"You need to get out of here," Hanover put a hand on Theo's shoulder.