Chapter 1- The First Line of Defense: A Huge Weight

This whole mess started during weight training at my high school. The requirement of lifting two hundred pounds on the bench press and squatting twenty-five pounds more was too much for my muscles, which were quite prone to injury due to numerous birth problems, so, thus, I failed the last physical fitness class required for graduation, and decided to take it over the summer. It had all gone perfectly normal and bone-crunching for the first three weeks. Then, we hit Monday of the last week.

It was the first day for final exams. I had today, tomorrow, and Thursday (Wednesdays are reserved for mile-long runs) to make as many attempts to hit my goal for the bench and squat racks as I could. My maximum on the bench had been raised from 130 pounds to 160, my current weight. This guaranteed a D if I couldn't use some adrenaline to pump my muscles. My max on the squats, however, was 225, and I just had to bend a little lower to hit an A.

The field house was the location of the weight room. It was a very large gray building just a thousand feet from the cafeteria. I crossed the senior patio, an uncovered cement area bigger than the whole cafeteria, weaving around the tables and up the ramp to the gym. I took my usual route: up the small grass hill, along the right side of the building, and into the last door. That's where it hit me: the whole place was empty. Normally, we have about five other guys working out along the machines, along with Mr. Perry shouting in someone's face to push one more time on the leg press machine with over 400 pounds on it. Nope, the whole room was deserted.

The basic rundown of the room is this: Along the back wall is a floor-to-ceiling mirror. In front of the mirror are shelves of dumbells in weights going from two pounds to a hundred. On the right wall were three leg machines, along with a broken one with a snapped string, and about five bench presses at 45 degree angles. Directly in front of those were half-a-dozen bench presses in the school's red and black regalia. The middle had several mats for dead lifts, push-ups, and the like, with the plastic and wood weights between each mat. The right wall had five squat racks, the infamous "backbreakers". Between each bench and squat rack was a rack of weights, ranging from 2.5 to 45. The door was right next to the leg machines. On my immediate left were cubbies for the professional lifters who come in, and right in the middle wall, across from the mirror, was the door to Mr. Perry's office.

Not knowing what to do here, I decided to just load up the bench with fifty pounds and start lifting. I made five lifts before I got tired and stopped, not having a spotter to keep me going.

That's when I heard the moan.

I thought that someone was in the office. Maybe they weren't feeling too good, but then I wondered why nobody had even recognized that I had wandered in just minutes earlier.

"Is someone there?" I called sheepishly toward the door. The moan grew louder, and I heard footsteps. I walked slowly over to the door, grabbed the knob and turned it.

The next thing I knew, I had slammed into the floor. Mr. Perry was on my chest, grapsing for my throat. Through the blur of the pain I caught his face. There was blood dripping from his chin, and a strange black ooze was sliming from his mouth. But the worst were his eyes: They had none of that light that you see in a person. He had an emotionless gaze locked onto my neck. I remembered that little book by Max Brooks.

I was facing a goddamned zombie!

I had not believed the guide, nor it's claims of incidents since 60,000 B.C. However, I always held a little bit of belief in the back of my head that there really were zombies. I began paying closer attention to the news, noting strange disappearences of people who were later found dead of bullets to the head, a sure sign of a wandering zombie later hunted down. I instinctively aimed for the head whenever I shot an airgun, or swung a plastic sword during those lightsaber fights I had with my best friend. Now, I realized that the guide was my only hope.

I kept Perry's face as far from my neck as I could. However, he was a 6'5 football coach that can bench 300. I was a 6'1 gaming geek with a somewhat well-formed physique. Worse, zombie's don't tire. They could pound and pull until their muscles literally dissolved. I was growing weaker by the second. I had to hit him with something.

My free hand groped the floor for a weapon. I felt my fingertips touch cold iron. I tilted my head. I was touching a five-pound weight for the bench press that some idiot had tossed over here. I began trying to simultaneously pull the disc into my graps while keeping my left hand under the zombified coach's chin. His snarls were getting louder, angrier even. I finally decided to try something stupid: I punched the zombie in the nose.

Suprisingly, it worked. The zombie, unable to feel pain, still got knocked back from the blow. I took those precious miliseconds to lunge to the side, still pinned somewhat by his bulk, and grasp the solid weight. I took my right arm and slammed the disc into the zombie's head. There was a light spray of that black ooze, evidence of a stagnant blood flow, and the zombie toppled off of me.

I lept to my feet and tossed the disc with all my might at the coach, missing the skull by mere inches and instead landing it on it's mouth. The weight was hardly enough to crack the skull, anyway, but I was desperate. The circular weight smashed into it's mouth, utterly destroying the ex-man's dental work and cracking it's jaw. While the undead freak still reeled from the force, I ran and picked up the 45 pound weight, the heaviest on the rack. I lifted the huge thing over my head.

"Overcome this iron, you sadistic freak!" I cried, throwing down the heavy circle.

It landed square on the zombie's head, utterly destroying what had been Mr. Perry's face. Zombie blood squirted and splashed across the floor, coupled with brain matter and bits of bone. I fell onto a bench, exhausted.

I had never dealt with such power. I figured that a creature with rotted muscles that you could powerwalk from would be easy to kill. I had never thought that their grip was enough to choke the life out of you.

I didn't have much time to ponder, though. Another figure lurched through the door. "Esser," I mumbled. The short, froglike boy's intestines were dragging behind him, and that same terrible moan was eminating from his lips. He was one of the many who failed the class last year. Right behind him was Lombardi, another failure at 6'4. He looked completely unchanged, aside from that frightening gaze, except for his nose, which was hanging off his face by a strip of skin. Both newly-infected high schoolers lurched toward me at a rate of about one step ever one-and-a-half seconds.

I stepped past the forming pool of blood and hopped over the bench, looking for another weapon. I quickly snatched up one of the bars, a 45 pound, six-foot long metal rod. The ends were wider to allow the weights, forming club heads. I swung the bar up and held it like a lance in front of me.

Lombardi's longer strides allowed him to overtake Esser, who was weighted down by his guts. I fudged some calculations for distance and force, and, taking careful aim, tossed it like an Olympic javelin thrower toward his head. The stainless steel bar's heavy head smashed through his jawbone and into his mouth, lodging in the back of his throat. The force of the throw propelled the unbalanced ghoul off it's feet and into Esser, who still managed to get up faster than expected and continue dragging towards me.

I dashed over to the dumbell racks and hefted a thirty. Feeling like I was in Dead Rising, I dashed toward the zombie, which I dwarfed, and slammed it down onto it's head. Esser's skull was completely crushed, sending zombie ooze all over my white shirt. I recoiled, disgusted, and tried wiping it off, which only covered my arms. Then I noticed that Lombardi was unsteadly returning to his feet, steel bar hanging from his mouth. As he walked, however, the bar caught in the rubber floor, tearing it from his jaw and removing his nose completely and dropping him face-first to the floor. I was able to calmy step over and dash the weight against his head, crushing it.

I now had to think. I needed a weapon and some kind of armor. The whole school may have been deserted, but I knew summer school was in session. There were dozens of teenagers and teachers Monday through Thursday. The only way the place could be empty is if the ghouls wandered from the halls, possibly joined by even more from outside. What was I saying? I had no proof that this was a full-blow invasion of the living dead!

It was about then that I heard more moaning.

I cracked the door open and peeked out. There were about a hundred zombies wandering the fields and tennis courts, with a good dozen or so out by the baseball field in the distance.

Yep, it was an invasion.

I quickly began assesing the situation. I couldn't stay here, I knew that. The cafeteria was locked and the only provisions were any bottles of Gatorade or snacks that the coaches left behind. That meant that I needed to get out. I couldn't go home because my mother was on a business trip up in Michigan and I was staying at a friend's house. And they were going to be away from the time I got here to the time I got home in five hours...

I had to make a run for it.