When The Dead Wake

Chapter Two

I take a step toward her and say, "Oh my gosh Coach Davis! Are you okay? What happened?"

She's standing in the middle of the room, slightly swaying. When I speak this time, she turns around and I gasp at her appearance.

Her skin is pale and slightly gray. Her eyes are glazed over and display a dazed expression. They are slightly red around the edges. She has drool running down her open mouth too. Pieces of her hair are pulled from her usually neat ponytail and her clothes are askew. The strangest thing is that she is covered with blood, blood that is gushing from the gaping wounds on her left shoulder and forearm.

My first instinct is to help. And to help, pressure needs to be applied to the wounds. My second instinct is that I shouldn't ignore the gut feeling that something is terribly wrong and it probably has to do with the crazy guy out front.

She starts to slowly walk toward me with her unwounded arm outstretched and I start looking for something to put on the wounds. The first thing I see that could work is Coach's windbreaker. She is about five feet away from me when I pull it off the back of her desk chair, unzip it, and hold it out to her.

"Coach, you're gonna need to hold this on your wounds to stop the bleeding."

Coach Davis doesn't stop shuffling towards me. That terrible gut feeling is becoming stronger. She now has her mouth wide open and drool is pouring out. The moaning noises she was making earlier are getting more persistant.

I begin to walk backwards slowly when she is three feet away, "I'm going to leave your jacket on your desk for you then I'm going to leave and go get help, okay?"

She is an arm's reach away when I toss her jacket on her desk and turn around to find help...and hit my nose on something hard.

The door.

It must've closed on its own after I came in. That terrible gut feeling is sounding out alarm bells as I turn around and come face to face with Coach Davis. Her outstretched hand squeezes my left shoulder in a death grip. I let out a little scream and push her back.

Coach Davis barely stumbles. Her grip on my shoulder keeps her steady and only tightens. Her finger nails are digging into me and I know her finger tips are going to leave bruises.

"Coach Davis! Let go of me! I'm just trying to help!"

She begins leaning towards me and the blood running down her arm drips onto my shoes and her drool drips onto my shirt. Her mouth keeps opening and closing and her moans turn into growls. I begin to panic when her head starts moving toward my shoulder.

I think that she is trying to bite me. I can't let her bite me. The crazy guy bit that lady. This is connected somehow. People aren't supposed to bite other people either. It's not right.

I push Coach Davis again. She stumbles and her grip loosens a bit but she doesn't let go. She seems to be getting more agitated which cannot be good. I try to pry her hand off of me. That doesn't work either and it also puts my hand in danger of getting bit.

I look around for something to hit her with and find a fire estinguisher on the wall to my right. I grab it and then hit her on the head with a blow that isn't too light to not faze her but isn't hard enough to be fatal. This gets her to once again loosen her grip but not let go. I take her momentary stun to hit her elbow with the estinguisher. I hear something crack, most likely a bone. I give her one last hard push. She let's go of me and falls down. I take the oppurtunity to flee. I shut the door and lean against it. I'm breathing hard and my heart is pounding.

I feel a thump and the rattle of the door and let out a small shriek. Coach Davis is trying to escape and is growling really loudly now.

Something strange is definitely going on tonight.

I hear the locker room door slam open and foot steps pounding in my direction.

"Catherine? Catherine? Where are you?"

It's Noah! I let out a huge sigh of relief and say,"I'm by Coach's office." My voice is shaky and high pitched.

He comes running around the row of lockers and slows to a stop when he sees me. A range of emotions crosses his face as he walks towards me. Relief, concern, panic.

When he reaches me he grabs my arms and and starts intently searching my body for something. He begins asking me a ton of questions that my pounding head does not appreciate.

"Why are you bloody? Whose blood is that? Please tell me that's not yours."

"It's Coach Davis's blood. She's got two giant wounds on her arms and I was trying to get her to apply some pressure on it but she grabbed my shoulder and wouldn't let go. Which by the way your not helping.", at this he slightly loosens his grip and mutters "sorry."

I continue,"I swear she tried to bite me. Alarm bells went off in my head when I remembered that crazy guy bit that lady earlier tonight. I grabbed a fire estinguisher, hit her with it, and I think I broke her arm. But thinking back now, the strange thing is she didn't even flinch. She just kept coming at me until I pushed her one last time. I just got out when you came in."

He sounds panicked and he has me in a death grip. I find this weird because he's usually really calm and collected. He's also searching me up and down intently again.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. It's Coach Davis that isn't okay. She's in her office and has two giant wounds on her arm and it looks like she's lost a lot of blood. I panicked and shut her in her office when she didn't answer me. She was just standing there staring at me and I got a bad feeling so I ran out here to find help."

"Listen to me, that woman that that guy bit, bit one of the men that were helping her. Now he's trying to bite the men that are holding him down. No one can get a hold of an ambulance or a police and there is a huge traffic jam outside the gym. Something is up and I don't want to stand around all night trying to figure out what it is. Riley and Nikki are waiting by the back exit for us. We are gonna walk back to Riley and I's dorm since it's closer, then figure out what to do next."

"What about Coach Davis?"

"Let's go tell someone that looks important and they'll take care of it, okay?"

"Okay."

Noah grabs my hand and we start walking toward the crowd of people when yet another scream rings out in the gym. We turn around to see Coach Davis pulling on the hair of a teenaged boy. She must've been almost to the point of breaking out of her office while Noah and I were talking.

People that are close by sprint to the boy's aid. A woman pushes Coach Davis and she falls onto her back. Four men hold Coach Davis down while the woman speaks to the hyseterical boy.

I start to run over when Noah pulls me back.

"What are you doing? They might need help and since I left Coach Davis in her office, it's my fault she got out."

"No they don't. You are not going to be able to do anything that their not already doing so let's go meet Riley and Nikki and get out of here."

"But..."

"Catherine, listen to me. Don't you find it weird that people are biting other people? That those people are totally oblivious to their wounds and don't speak when someone is talking to them? Don't you find it weird that no one can get ahold of an ambulance or even the freaking police? We have to get out of here before it's too late."

"Before it's too late for what?"

"I don't want you to freak out on me but Riley and I have a theory about what's going on."

"And what's this theory?"

Noah looks me straight in the eye and says, "Those people are zombies and this is the start of the zombie apocalypse."