The Monster Apocalypse

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sprawled out on the cold cement floor, his jaw still in pain from his father's kick, his forehead pressed up against the bars with enough pressure to give him a migraine, Paul managed to look on the bright side of things: at least he had his high school principal to talk to.

"Paul, what are you doing here?" the principal asked, his voice tired and defeated. He sounded a million miles away, even though he was just two cells over. "I'd expect your wily friend Brin to come out here—she was the one involved in the Bodie incident, after all—but not you. You're new to the community, and to Grisly High. You shouldn't have come here." He coughed, twice, then banged on one of his bars. "Wait a minute! Did Brin come here with you?"

"No," he said, shaking his head slightly, even though Principal Stine couldn't see him. "It's just me. I'm alone."

"Well, what business is it of yours what happened to Chace and Sawyer? You weren't even here. You're an exchange student. From Germany, right?"

"I'm not an exchange student."

"What?" The faceless voice in the hallway didn't get it.

"Principal Stine, I imagine this might get me banned from your wonderful high school—and I do mean that when I say wonderful. In all my many years on this planet, it's the best I've ever attended..."

"I don't understand," he said. "What do you mean you—"

"I'm a Volga," Paul said. "Err, a vampire, I guess, to be more generic. I've been alive for more than a century. The man who locked you into your cell, that creepy man with the top hat, is my father. And I know how Chace and Sawyer died."

Paul expected a scream, or a gasp in the form of an epiphany. Instead, silence ensued. Paul waited for a response. Nothing.

"Principal Stine? Are you still there?"

"Yes," he finally said. "Sorry. I'm just trying to process this." More silence. Then: "Did you kill them, Paul?"

"What?"

"Are Chace and Sawyer dead because of you?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Because at this point, I just want the truth. I just want you to tell me what really happened."

"Of course," Paul said. And he did.

He started by telling the old man about his relationship with his tyrant father. Then he told him how Brin and Ash and all the others came into Bodie to shoot their movie. He told Principal Stine how he helped saved Brin's and most of the others' lives, that he wasn't able to get to Sawyer in time, and that Chace ran way ahead of the group and got caught in a tangled web of vampires before he had the chance to save him. He told him that he had tried to start a new life in Grisly, away from his father, but never got a chance to—because his dad found his whereabouts within days and immediately brought him back to Bodie.

Then he told Principal Stine about the zombies.

"OK, now you're just pulling my leg," the man said. "Vampires, I guess I can understand. But zombies? Those things are pure fiction. Created merely for B-grade horror movie entertainment."

"I saw them. With my own eyes. I watched them rise right up out of the golf course and attack me and my friends." He sighed, then turned around, so his back rested against the bars. He shook his head. "I don't even know..."

"You don't know what?"

"I don't know if anyone made it out alive. Brin, Ash... any of them."

"What do you mean?"