School. Tired and grumpy. I hate the nightmare more than ever. I'm a teenager. I should be dreaming about getting hot and steamy with movie stars, not about killer babies. I was sure I'd leave the dream behind as I got older, but no such luck. I still have it two or three nights a week.
I barely listen in class at the best of times. Today I tune out completely and scribble crude drawings over my books. I suck at art but I like to doodle when I'm bored.
Most of my teachers ignore me. They know I'm a lost cause and they don't try to reach out to me. They also know I'm not someone you mess with. One of them crossed me a couple of years ago. I'd been in a fight and had been sent to the principal's office. The teacher saw me waiting outside and whispered something to one of his colleagues. Both men sniggered. Then he said out loud, "But what can you expect from someone with a father like that?"
Someone punctured the tires on that teacher's car. Someone found out where he lived and threw a brick through his window. Someone stuck up pictures of him around the local area with his phone number and the message, Ring for a good time!
I'm not saying who that someone was, but after he came creeping up to B Smith in school one day and meekly said, "Sorry for what I said about your dad," he was left in peace.
I fall asleep in history. Jonesenzio is duller than most of our teachers. I'm not the only one to snooze in his class.
"Fire!" someone hisses in my ear and I jolt awake, almost falling off my chair.
Meths and Kray laugh their faces off as Jonesenzio scowls at me.
"Sods," I spit at them, rubbing my elbow where I hit it on the desk.
"If you're quite finished..." Jonesenzio murmurs.
"Sorry, Mr. Jones," I simper. "I thought I saw a mouse."
He drones on. I don't mind Jonesenzio. He's given me a C on every essay we've been assigned for the last three years, even though I've never handed one in.
Mum sometimes grouches about my lousy grades. "How come you don't do as well in the other subjects as you do in history?" Dad tosses me a wink when she goes on like that. He had Jonesenzio when he was younger. He knows the score.
"I bet you were dreaming about me," Meths chuckles, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the teacher. Jonesenzio doesn't complain if you talk loudly in his class, but he stops talking and stands there silently, looking at you politely, which is even worse. A couple of us tested him once and found that he's happy to do that for an entire class. You'll never out-patient the Jones.
"Yeah," I tell Meths. "It was a real nightmare."
Meths is the biggest guy in our year, and the oldest. He started school a year later than most of us and has been held back twice. That's where he got his nickname, short for Methuselah. I wish I could lay claim to that but it wasn't one of mine. I'd no idea who Methuselah was until someone explained it to me.
"You can copy my notes later," Kray says seriously.
"Notes?" I take the bait.
He holds up a drawing. Kray's a much better artist than me. The picture is of La Lips, naked, being given some after-school tuition by a very animated Jonesenzio.
I smother a laugh and raise my knuckles for him to knock. "Don't let Copper see it," I gasp.
"I was hoping he could correct any anatomical inaccuracies," Kray says.
"Like you haven't seen La Lips in the swimming pool," Meths snorts, and this time we all have to smother laughs. It's an old story that La Lips shows everything in the public pool if you give her a quid. No truth in it as far as I know, but when did that ever stop a good story?
History ends (if only!) and we roll out into the yard for lunch. I swipe a bag of chips and nick a bar of chocolate from a girl in a lower year. She tries to fight me for it but her friends pull her off. I sneer as they haul her away. She had a narrow escape. In my current mood I'd have happily taken her into the toilet and half drowned her. If her friends hadn't pulled her clear when they did...
I spend most of the break with Meths, Kray, Trev, Ballydefeck, Suze, La Lips, Copper, Dunglop and Elephant. The usual gang, except for Linzer and Pox, who are off somewhere else.
There's a new zombie clip circulating on the Internet. Copper shows it to us on his phone. It's footage of an undead soldier. If the clip is genuine, it looks like he was one of the team sent in to eliminate the Pallaskenry mob. He must have been infected, got away, tangled with some humans later.
In the clip, several men are pounding the zombie with shovels and axes. One of them strikes his left arm a few times and it tears loose. Another of the men picks it up and starts whacking the zombie over the head with it, cheered on by his team.
I laugh the first time I watch the clip. Most of the others do too. It's comical, a guy being slapped around with his own severed arm.
Then, as Copper replays it a couple of times, I start focusing on the finer details. The terror in the men's eyes. The rage and hunger in the soldier's. The flecks of dried blood around his mouth, a sign that he must have fed prior to his run-in with the vigilantes. The long bits of bone sticking out of his fingers. His fangs.
The clip stops with the guys hitting the zombie, leaving us to guess how it ends. I imagine one of the group chopping off the soldier's head with an ax, the men pulping it beneath their feet, not stopping until every last scrap of brain has been mulched. That's how they kill zombies in films, by destroying their brains. Does that work in real life too? I assume so but I'm not sure.
There's silence when Copper turns off his phone. We're all troubled by what we've seen. We can't even make a joke about it. Not yet. It feels too real at the moment. We need time to absorb and then dismiss it.
Elephant starts rabbiting on about soccer in order to break the solemn spell. He's a real fanatic, goes to matches all the time. I watch the highlights on TV most weeks, so that I can discuss the goals with the others, but soccer bores me.
Elephant finishes moaning about the weekend's match and pauses for breath.
"Enough already," I snap. "You're driving me crazy."
"Who rattled your cage?" Elephant scowls.
"You did," I tell him. "And if you don't shut it, I'll cut you down to size."
Lots of catcalls, everyone relieved to have something else to think about, welcoming the distraction. Elephant didn't get his nickname because he's tall or fat, but because of what his mates saw the first time he undressed for a shower after gym.
"Leave my trunk alone," Elephant smirks, crossing his hands protectively in front of himself.
"Are you all right?" Trev asks me. "You're like a tiger today."
"Knackered," I growl. "Didn't get much sleep."
"Worried about zombies?" Suze asks sympathetically.
"Don't be daft," I tell her. "I'm dreading the exams."
Everyone laughs, forgetting about the clip, putting it behind us, slipping back into our normal routines as if we'd never been disturbed.
"You won't get into Oxford if you don't get straight A's," Dunglop says.
"I prefer Cambridge anyway," I sniff.
"God, imagine if you did get in," Meths says, and we stare at him. "I mean on a sports scholarship or something."
"You ever see me playing any sports?" I jeer.
"No, but maybe there's some other..." Meths pulls a face and tries to remember what he wanted to say. I fail classes because I don't give a damn. Meths, bless him, really is thick.
The bell rings and I slap Meths's back. "Come on. I don't think either of us has to worry about Cambridge or Oxford. I'll be amazed if we make it out of this place."
"Yeah, but..." Meths shrugs and smiles, letting go of whatever crazy thought it was that he had. Thoughts never stick long with Meths. If zombies ever do attack, he has nothing to worry about. With that tiny brain, he's the last one they'll target!