Never Slow Dance with a Zombie - By E. Van Lowe Page 0,62

grip was too strong.

"Hhhhhhh." Heather's lips parted.

Without thinking, I raced across the room and rapped her sharply on the nose with my rolled-up program.

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"Yeeee!" She released Amanda, letting out a high-pitched whine.

"Sorry about that By the way, cute top," I called as I

pulled Amanda away.

"Where are we going?" she squawked.

"I don't know."

The gym was quickly filling up with angry zombies. We had three, four minutes tops before we'd be attacked. I began looking around for another escape route, or a weapon, anything that could prolong our ordeal.

That's when I noticed the ropes.

I yanked Amanda over to the wall and pulled on the cord releasing the ropes from the ceiling. Four thick, braided ropes dropped down.

Amanda eyed the ropes, her nose in the air. "What?"

"It's our only way out, Amanda. We'll climb them, and stay up until Sybil can rescue us."

"Sybil isn't going to rescue us."

She was probably right about that.

"She might. We have to try."

"This is a thousand-dollar Chanel ball gown!" Amanda whined. "It has no business on the ropes."

Somehow, I had to get Amanda to climb the rope. "Look," I said, pointing at the swarm of zombies nearing us. "Goths. You're about to become a Goth for all eternity."

She eyed the Goths with disdain. "Ugh! That monochromatic color scheme. How boring."

"I know."

"And I believe they apply their makeup with a trowel."

"I know."

"And talk about bad hair days. I've never seen one with a good hair day."

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"1 know!" I exclaimed as the Goths got closer. "And you'll have to listen to Goth pop ... Evanescence."

She brightened a bit. "I could handle Evanescence. That Amy Lee's got--"

"Okay, forget about the Goth pop. Just keep thinking black. Nothing but black. Everyday black. All black, all the time ... Black."

"Oh, my goodness!" Amanda shrieked, shooting the nearing Goths one last withering glance.

She began to climb.

I scrambled up the adjacent rope as the zombies closed in. The thick hemp ripped into my hands and knees. My palms burned with the pain of a thousand paper cuts, yet this time I continued upward.

Just then the song changed. "You Keep Me Hangin' On" filled the air.

Amanda struggled up the rope in the voluminous ball gown. The zombies below swatted at her heels. One snatched at her shoe, and she kicked it off as she shimmied up and out of reach. "My arms are killing me!" she called.

My arms hurt as well. I was grateful for the little practice Mrs. Mars had insisted I get in gym class. But I still wasn't in any kind of shape, and my feeble muscles screamed in protest.

"Hang in there," I called back. I looked down at the horde of zombies gathering below and was surprised to see they were no longer divided into cliques. Prep zombies stood shoulder-to-shoulder with nerds, stoner nerds with emos--all working together to get at us.

At that moment thoughts of Sybil flared through my mind. She'd called her desire to change the school's social structure a silly idea. But it wasn't. She had actually gotten various groups to roam with one another. It's not like they were hanging out

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or anything--they were zombies. But she got them to coexist peacefully, not snarking at one another, or gossiping behind one another's backs, or getting jealous when one of their friends liked a cute boy. The zombies had just one thing in common-- they were zombies. But we kids have a whole lot in common. Shouldn't it be easier for us to hang together?

A wave of shame flooded through me. While I had been busy living out the lie of being the most popular girl at school, Sybil had realized that being popular wasn't the be-all and end-all of high school existence. To her, we were all the same.

Some of the zombies started jumping to get at us. They pushed and shoved one another to be first in line to dig their teeth into us. This sent the ropes swinging back and forth. The swinging motion made it harder to hang on. They were inadvertently shaking the ropes the way one might shake a tree to make an apple fall.

"Stop that!" Amanda yelled down at the zombies. She looked at me. "I can't hold on much longer." She looked down again. "Look, there's Kim Travers. She's a mathlete. Maybe she'll bite me. I've always wanted to be good at math." I could tell from the look on her face she was giving in to the idea of becoming a zombie. Her grip loosened.

"I don't think it works like that,