They Are Zillions (Book 2): Zurrounded Read online

  Zurrounded

  They Are Zillions

  Hayley Lawson

  Mixi J Applebottom

  Copyright © 2018 by Hayley Lawson and Mixi J Applebottom

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About Mixi

  About Hayley

  Also by Mixi J Applebottom

  Out of breath Hunter pounded his fist against the church door, he hoped that Malcolm, Karen’s dad, would answer. The pastor opened the door only a crack peering out nervously.

  "It's Hunter." Said Hunter straightening his hat.

  Hunter could hear furniture being moved from behind the door, Malcolm had barricaded himself in.

  Malcolm swung door all the way open. "Good." He said, then glanced behind Hunter to make sure there was no one else there.

  Hunter stepped into the church quickly, and he helped Malcolm slam the heavy wooden door shut. Then they slid the pew up against the door.

  Malcolm caught his breath then looked over to Hunter. "I've been trying to call Sebastian, but I haven't gotten a hold of him yet." He said. Sebastian was Malcolm son, he was a bit of a handful.

  Hunter let out a sympathetic sigh, he knew how Malcolm was feeling. "The school was overrun, but Jack and Francis are in the kindergarten classroom. I have to get to them."

  "Sebastian is with them?" Said Malcolm, nervously.

  Hunter shook his head. "I don't think so. He’s a resourceful kid, he’ll be okay and I’ll find him."

  Malcolm was glancing around the church, and all the empty pews. "Okay."

  Hunter stretched, his back aching from that long car ride. "Have you managed to get a hold of Joyce? Is anyone else here?"

  Malcolm nodded. "Yeah, she's been filling in for the secretary, so she's… She's in the secretary office." Said Malcolm. He nervously looked left and right and then back to Hunter. "I've been trying to keep it… Quiet. I didn't want her to know… I gave her project."

  "You haven't told your wife, about the herd of sick people outside?" Said Hunter, and then he burst out laughing. "You sure love to coddle her.”

  Joyce bustled out of the back office.

  "Is that you Hunter?" Joyce asked grinning. As always, she was in a floor-length dress, which made it look like she was floating across the floor. "It's so good to see you!"

  Hunter smiled awkwardly, not sure what to say.

  Malcolm, behind her was shaking his head no and indicating that he should not tell Joyce what was going on.

  Joyce smiled back. "First day of school! Aren't you just mortified? I cried all morning, but then… Malcolm had the greatest idea for me to put together a Christmas play. I’ve been working on music… Thinking about costumes… I've got the best parts lined up for Francis and Jack," she said, flashing her winning smile. And it was obvious her eyes were red from tears earlier in the day, despite her current bright smile.

  Hunter scratched his head and tried to think of a reply. "I'm sure… I'm sure they’d like that."

  "I was thinking that Karen could maybe help make some of the costumes? Does she like to do that? Or maybe she be better at directing? I feel like it's quite a handful to manage children on my own, do you think she can help?" Joyce beamed.

  Hunter glanced nervously at Malcolm who was making the seal your lips sign. Malcolm's eyes were wide and he shook his head again. And Hunter cleared his throat slowly.

  "Um." Said Hunter, unable to contain himself.

  Before he could speak Malcom jumped in. "I'm sure Karen would love that, she's just as good of a mom is you."

  She clapped her hands together with enthusiasm. "Oh great, I am so excited!"

  "Joyce." Said Hunter with a very serious face.

  Malcolm stepped between Joyce and Hunter. "Maybe go back to your office, Joyce.”

  "Malcolm, I'm sorry." Said Hunter. And he gently pushed the pastor aside. "Joyce, there is some sort of plague going around, it's very dangerous."

  Joyce eyes flickered back and forth between Malcolm and Hunter. "Okay? Do you want me to call the prayer chain?"

  "I…" Hunter hung his head and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. He took a deep breath and he looks back up. Malcolm had a very frustrated expression on his face. "I don't think the prayer chain exists anymore."

  Joyce looked immediately confused.

  "Look, whatever it is… It makes people bite other people, they push down buildings. They move together and swarm," said Hunter. "I just came from a farm where the men were trying to eat each other. It’s bad. My children are stuck in the school. Karen and my dad are stuck in the library. Because so many infected people are… Swarming."

  Her hand was fluttering at her throat, and her eyes were wide. “Swarming?” Joyce asked.

  Malcolm clapped his hands together nervously and then reached over and held his wife's hand. "But it's just here. We just have to wait for the Army, or the Coast Guard or something." Said Malcolm with a smile. “They’ll save us. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, ‘cause help is on its way.”

  Hunter shook his head. “Telecommunications are not working correctly, not the radio, not the television, the phones. Everything is buggered, I'm not sure if this is because towers are being pushed down by sick people, or if the buildings have collapsed… Or what." Said Hunter, slowly putting the pieces together the situation at hand. "But I think, I think the few healthy… I think we are stuck on our own for… a while," he said. He bit his lip and stared at Joyce. Her face went from pale to bright red.

  Joyce stared at Hunter, and then looked over at Malcolm. "And you knew?" She shoved her husband, then turned back to Hunter. "The school? Is Sebastian there?"

  "I will look for him." Said Hunter. "But I'm gonna need… At least one of your cars, so I can get… Around. My family seems to be safe so far. Just trapped. We gotta figure out a way to get us all in the same place."

  Joyce still looked terrible confused.

  Hunter needed to show Joyce. "Go look at the windows. You'll see what I'm talking about, go look out all those windows."

  "Okay." She said, and just then the bell rang.

  The bell in the tower. It always rang at noon. Twelve long strokes.

  Hunter let out a shout. "We have to stop it! How do we turn off the bell? Hurry!” He frantically looked around as the booming noise danced through the sanctuary.

  "It’s automated." Said Malcolm, "why do we have to stop it?" His eyes were wide.

  Hunter’s face turned deathly pale. "We have to! It will make them..." Hunter was breathless, his voice catching in his throat. This was even worse than the squealing car he had been stuck in. "Turn it off!" He shouted, his hat suddenly off his head and clutched over his heart.

  Joyce was running to the window, staring outside. "It's like a flash flood." She whispered, staring at the horde that was crawling towards them, at a painfully quick pace.

  Malcolm sprang into action, running through the church to wherever the bells controls were. But it was too late, they couldn't stop the herd now.

  He turned off the bell before it rang the third toll, but they still they were coming. Mo
ving slowly and steadily.

  The herd was coming.

  Francis was in algebra two, despite only being thirteen years old. This was an upper-level high school math class, but she had always been advanced. She liked to learn. She like to think, unlike the other idiots in this class.

  The school wasn’t very big, it was combining elementary, middle and high school. Francis wasn’t the typical eighth grade student. In fact, she didn’t take any grade level classes anymore, opting instead to take the hardest high school classes they would allow her to take. Algebra two only had three students in it. Francis was carefully copying down every problem the teachers working on the board.

  She liked the way the numbers were organized on the paper in neat little lines. Mathematics made much more sense to her than language arts. Writing was a painfully irritating subject. Objectively speaking she could write every word, every sentence, every nuance of the language could be perfectly accurate, but then that dumb teacher would say things like it wasn’t emotionally engaging.

  Who could work with that? Even when Francis ordered an emotional thesaurus, and tried to write words with stronger punch, her teacher would still say things like I just didn’t feel anything. One of these days she was going to feel something from Francis- it might just be a swift punch in her nose.

  That’s why she preferred math, there was a way to do it, and it was either right or wrong. Francis always got it correct. From every number carefully written, to every letter. It was perfection. She didn’t like to tell anyone this, but her favorite thing to do right before bed was flip through her math journals and notice how beautiful they were.

  Francis glanced over at Mark. He was a high school senior who was trying desperately to pass this class. His right hand was stuffed in his pocket, and he had an absent look on his face. Mark had mastered texting from his pocket. He wasn’t fooling anyone, no one’s pocket just lit up for no reason. So, there he would sit, with his glowing pocket and a subtle grin all through class.

  The other student was Julie she was a tenth-grade student, and although she was on track to take a couple of college courses in the next year she wasn’t nearly as advanced as Francis.

  Francis considered both of these other students below her in intelligence. And yet, she found herself weirdly interested in Mark. Francis wasn’t sure if this was part of how hormones worked. She wasn’t particularly interested in boys, but sometimes she would notice how he smelled. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant.

  Francis wondered what on earth that could mean. She researched to see if it was perhaps some sort of brain tumor, but the results were inconclusive.

  She glanced over at the lake that she could barely see from the school. It was sparkling in the sunlight. Forty-five minutes away was the upscale, much bigger high school in Burns Junction. And from that moment on she had been staring at the lake, and thinking about the school just past it.

  It seemed like her whole life would’ve taken a different direction if she could’ve had an algebra teacher who understood the problems at least as well as she did. She subtly raised her hand.

  Mrs. Jenkins turned and glanced at her. “Yes?” She asked.

  “I think you messed up your pemdas?” Francis said in a flurry.

  Mrs. Jenkins paused and stared at the problem. “I did parentheses first...” said Mrs. Jenkins. She was distractedly staring at the board trying to find her mistake.

  Clearly Francis would have to explain what the problem was to Mrs. Jenkins. “Yes, you did the first set of parentheses first. But then you forgot to distribute that exponent correctly, and really should just erase the entire last step and try again,” said Francis, she desperately tried not to sound smug.

  Mrs. Jenkins let out an annoyed noise and stared at Francis. Then she slowly turned and looked at the board again. “Julie?” She asked.

  Julie nodded in agreement “I agree with Francis.” Said Julie, without looking up. She was carefully erasing the second half of the problem that she had already copied down, including all the errors.

  Francis glanced at her own paper, which she had copied down, except she corrected the errors along the way. There was no reason to copy incorrect equations.

  Francis glanced again at the lake, thinking about the much bigger, much better high school. Her mom had strictly said that she couldn’t do it, they couldn’t drive her that far twice a day. In fact, she said something along the lines of, ‘relax you’re only a child once, stop pushing so hard.’

  Mark carefully slid his phone out of his shorts just a smidge so that he could read the reply from whoever he texted, and then his head shot up. “Can you see the lake?” He asked.

  Mrs. Jenkins looked at Mark with delight he never asked a question in class. “What are you talking about?” Said Mrs. Jenkins.

  Mark replied by pointed out the window. Then he looked down at his phone again. He hopped up and looked out the window with his face pressed against the glass. “There are people.” Mark said loudly.

  Julie stood to, walking over to the window pressing her face close to the glass, to see what Mark was going on about.

  The lake was sparkling, rippling even. What are they making a fuss about? Francis thought, as she joined them.

  There were people in the lake and were heading towards the school, they looked as if they’d been walking along the bottom of the lake as their heads bobbed up first then their bodies, once the water got shallowed by the end of the lake.

  Not one, not two, a swarm, all bobbing along together.

  There had to be hundreds, if not thousands of people in the water. The lake danced and sparkling with their movements. They looked ominous, like an army. What the heck were they doing out there?

  Francis looked at the others confused, as she stared at it. She chewed on the end of her pencil and opened her mouth to say something. But words wouldn’t come. Then she stuffed her pencil back in her mouth. The swarm pushed through the water finally got to the edge, the first few stepping. Their bodies were bloated from the water and they started walking shuffling towards school. First it was ten people, then twenty. Then thirty- then fifty. As the more and more of them reached the edge, it became obvious that the entire group of people was coming towards school.

  Before Mrs. Jenkins could say anything, there was a buzzing sound. As the announcements opened over the school speaker.

  A cracked voice said the following. “There appears to be a large group of people headed for the school, please take all of your students to your lockdown locations. We are not yet sure what is happening, but we expect that they will be here in the next fifteen minutes. Please move quickly, keep your children safe.” The voice ended, Francis knew the voice, it was her Principle and she sounded nervous.

  Francis quickly grabbed her backpack and slid it on. Before Mrs. Jenkins had a chance to lock the door she stepped into the hallway. She had to get to her brother Jack, it was only his first day at Chatfield. He must be terrified, she thought.

  “Get back here Francis.” Yelled Mrs. Jenkins.

  Francis ran.

  There was no way she was going to leave Jack on his own. It was a serious sprint, and for the first time in her life she was glad that she had been doing laps in gym class. Her thighs were burning, and her lungs were on fire. She got a stitch as she was running up the flight of stairs, but she didn’t let the pain stop her. If they locked that door, they might not let her in.

  Finally, she saw the little tracings of hands that lined the hallway right before the kindergarten classroom.

  Francis knew one of the most essential part of keeping family alive in an emergency situation was to know where your family was at all times. She yanked open the kindergarten classroom door just as the teacher, Mrs. Graham was trying to lock it. “I’m staying with my brother.” She gasped, grateful that she could stop running. She doubled over, her hands on her thighs, gasping for air.

  Mrs. Graham nodded nervously. Thankfully Jack’s classroom was not on the side of the bu
ilding where they could see the lake. Mrs. Graham locked the door.

  Francis ran to her little brother and held him close to her, “yuck. Get off me.” Jack said pulling away from his big sister, only five and already embarrassed of getting a hug from her. Francis grinned and messed up his blonde hair, “hey!” He said, pushing it back in place.

  “Nice to see you too.” Francis grinned in relief. The lockdown would hopefully not last too long, but a swarm of people was unprecedented.

  Francis scanned the room, there was a bathroom off to one side, baskets with snacks. Also they were away from the lake. Francis was already considering the idea that they could jump out the window and run for their lives, but she thought that was a little dramatic.

  Why would those people be swarming like that? She wondered. She chewed on her lip and tried to make sense of it.

  Soon there was a second loud buzzing noise, as the announcer came back on. “There’s something wrong with the people coming towards the school, do not interact with them. Maintain lockdown at all costs. Stay safe. We’ve notified the police, consider them an active threat. Do not open your door for anyone other than cops.” Said the principal, her voice was nervous and shuddering into the phone line. They could hear breaking glass, right before the line went silent.

  Francis and Mrs. Graham both looked terrified, as they recognize the kind of trouble they were in. “There’s too many people out there, we are in trouble.” Whispered Francis. “Maybe we should run for it.”

  “Where else could we go? I think we’re safest here.” Mrs. Graham said, her hands were fluttering nervously.

  “Okay. I’m gonna call my dad though.” Francis said quickly. She dialed and looked out the window. She couldn’t see anything but the parking lot. No cops were showing up yet. They should be here quickly.