Brody and Madison - Into the Library (Patreon)

Brody and Madison stepped into the lobby of Chipper Ridge High School and stopped before rows of corpses and a pile of burnt bodies. They stood for several moments, equally horrified and captivated by the scene of death. The twins stood close together holding hands to comfort one another.

“I don’t…I…I,” Brody stammered. He was breathing fast like he had just stepped off the field after a hard practice.

Madison grabbed his chin and turned his head. “Don’t look at it. We’re just by the river with Uncle Nate. You’re fishing, and I’m listening to the radio and painting my nails.”

Brody stared at the ground, and Madison led him around the piles of staff and students. She couldn’t help but stare at the dead, the bullet holes, the blood stains, the infected flesh, the faces frozen in fear. Along the side wall, she guided them in silence.

What happened here? she wondered. Who would have shot up these kids? Who burned the pile of them?

Past a knocked-over statue of Ernest Milford, their great grandfather, the two heard a rustle under a cloth banner lying across the tile floor. Brody shoved Madison behind himself, so hard she stumbled and bumped the cement wall.

“Brody, no!” she said in a harsh whisper.

He rushed to the gold-and-green banner, with the words “School Spirit”, just as a hand shot out from the tasseled end.

“Brody!” Madison said, her voice breaking.

He yanked the banner and tossed it from the floor. A teenage girl sat up and scurried back on her hands away from Brody.

“Aniyah?” both twins yelled at the same time.

The teenage girl looked at Brody, her eyes full wide with two small orbs of brown. Her black hair was wild and shooting off in directions, and her t-shirt and jeans were smudged with dirt and blood.

She let out a hard sigh. “Brody? Madison? What are you doing here?”

Brody knelt in front of her. “Jenna Powell told us the school was abandoned, so we came here to get food and water and supplies and stuff. Are you okay?”

“I guess,” she said, shrugging. “It was crazy. When the school announced early dismissal, everyone started leaving and then some kids said there was an outbreak. They were showing videos on their phones of infected people…”

As the two spoke, Madison looked the girl over from head to toe. Her normal brown skin had a waxy undertone, and her right ankle had a dark maroon stain. Her hands clenched and relaxed repeatedly, and her skin was dry and cracking. Parts of it looked the color of mustard.

“What’s up with your hands?” she asked. She tried to hold back her aggressive tone, but it didn’t work.

Aniyah glanced at her hands and then wiped her palms together. She smoothed her shirt and fingered her hair to straighten out the tangles. “I spent the last hour hiding under a pile of dead kids and a banner. Sorry I’m not one-hundred percent.” Her voice rose with sarcasm and annoyance.

“You look great considering the circumstances,” Brody said and offered her a hand.

She took it and let him help her up. “Thank you, baby. I mean, Brody.” She shined a bright smile at him.

“So, you were saying you went to the gym to wait?” he asked, helping her to stand. His cheeks took on a rosy glow.

Aniyah limped forward. “Mrs. Connors told us either to go home or wait in the gym. On the way to the gym, I went to the bathroom first. When I came out, the doors were chained. I heard people screaming and fighting. It was terrible.” She covered her face and made crying sounds.

Brody put an arm around her and hugged her close. “I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”

Madison stood on the sideline, arms folded. “What’s wrong with your foot?”

Aniyah snapped back. “I twisted my ankle running from an infected kid. Sorry, I wasn’t ditching school to have a pool party.”

Madison clicked her teeth. “Come on, Brody. Let’s get to our lockers.”

She walked along the school’s main corridor, toward the stairwell leading upstairs. Aniyah draped her arm around Brody’s neck, and he held her waist for support as she limped.

“We should go through the library, not the cafeteria,” Aniyah said. She winced as her foot pressed flatter on the floor. “Lots of kids were hanging in the caf. I’m sure some of them, you know…”

Madison stopped at the stairwell door and let out an exaggerated sigh. “Whatever princess wants,” she said under her breath.

“What?” Brody asked. “Did you say something?”

“Not me,” Madison said.

They walked through the long hallway, their light footsteps amplified in the wide space and quiet of the school. The dome-shaped ceiling held their echoes, and whiffs of feral moans came to the three students from the air vents above. As they stepped to the double doors of the Tanya Milford Memorial Library, the doors hung crookedly off their hinges, one with a scar in the solid wooden flesh. Madison braced the hinges and pressed her ear to listen through the surface. She heard only murmurs from the other side, like long wail of ghosts.

Like the House of Horrors we visited last Halloween.

“Let’s go,” Aniyah snapped.

Madison squeezed her eyes shut. This girl is going to give me an aneurysm. I wish we could ditch her, but Brody’s going to want to help her. Super-hero Brody. 

“I’m sure it’s fine, Maddie. We should let Aniyah sit for a minute,” Brody said.

Madison snickered as she pulled open the doors. He never fails to disappoint.

The library stood in ruin, the signs of chaos spread about with trash, tipped shelves, broken wood, and scattered books. Fresh blood coated a checkout desk. A painting of Professor Luckmore, a beloved teacher who passed away long before the twins were born, lie broken with a long shard of the frame missing.

Brody leaned Aniyah against the clean checkout desk, lifted a chair off its side, and placed it beside the injured student. Taking his hand, she sat and stretched out her leg. Madison gave it a hard stare. The skin had turned waxier, almost yellow, and small green swirls formed above her knee and the outer side of her thigh.

“If only my leg could get massaged,” Aniyah said and rubbed along her thin, shapely calf.

Madison gripped Brody’s arm and pulled him toward the periodicals section. “Let’s look around for supplies.”

“Be right back,” Brody said.

The twins walked between two high shelves of magazines and newspapers, their eyes scanning for anything of use. Brody spotted a backpack and rushed to pick it up. As he rummaged through it, Madison checked the pockets of a hoodie draped across a chair. She found chocolate peanut bar, tore the wrapper, and took a huge bite. She savored the morsel and went for another bite. As she lifted it to her mouth, she hesitated and then folded the wrapper over the free end.

“Nothing in this book bag but a Geometry text book, a bus pass, and old smelly gym clothes.” Brody dropped the bag.

Madison held out the half-eaten candy bar. “Finish this. It’s not much, but we need calories.”

Brody took it and looked over at Aniyah, an aisle away. “Aniyah, are you hungry?”

Aniyah tilted her head from side to side as if mulling over the question. “No, not at all. In fact, I feel nauseas.” She rubbed the sides of her stomach. “Right before I ran downstairs from the gym, I stopped at my locker and grabbed my lunch. I don’t even remember eating it, but I must have. I’m so full. At least that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about—“

She cut off her sentence, stuck out her head, and puffed out her cheeks. Rich-yellow vomit shot spewed from her mouth in a stream, three-feet out. It hit the floor with a splash.

Madison and Brody turned away, recoiling at the sight of it.

“Oh God,” Aniyah said and sucked in a long breath. “I am so sorry you had to see that. I feel better now. Really warm, but all the pain is gone. I don’t feel sick at all.”

The twins saw movement from behind a toppled bookshelf leaning against a bannister. Mr. Fleigmeyer, the head librarian, lumbered out. They recognized his tall, rotund body and pear-shaped body. His face drooped on one side, and his eyes looked in opposite directions like a squid. One hand was hooked, the other crushed. Brody took a step forward, but Madison gripped his jersey from behind, slinging him back to her.

Fleigmeyer pounced on Aniyah, hooking her with his claw, and biting down on her shoulder. Aniyah didn’t scream or even grimace.

“Get off of me,” she shouted and pulled away. A chuck of flesh tore from her shoulder, ripping like a Band-Aid. She hobbled a few steps and leaned on the other check out desk.

As Fleigmeyer chewed the wad of shoulder meat, Brody yanked away from Madison. He ran at the zombie librarian and slammed a shoulder into his hip. The force bowled him over, sending him onto the bookshelf and sprawling him out.

“If I just lay down a minute and close my eyes…” Aniyah said in a sing-song voice and climbed onto the desk, face-up.

From a reading room, two figures burst through the open doorway and ran at Madison, the closest victim. One lagged behind, running on a dislocated hip. The other, a muscular senior, a basketball player whose name she forgot, sped at her, his arms out and mouth open and shrieking. He barreled across the library, his body shoving aside desks and chairs like they were made of cardboard.

“Watch out,” Brody yelled and started toward the senior.

“I got this one,” Madison said, jogging toward the opposite side of the library’s first floor. “Get the second one.”

She kept ten paces ahead of the zombie and locked eyes on the A/V station, a closet-like room with old recording equipment from the 60s still used for certain elective classes. When she was a freshman, she did an extra credit report on JFK’s assignation for AP American History, and listened to recordings of interviews with friends of the suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Right outside the room, a portion of carpet was raised an inch. Every time she visited the A/V room, she tripped. Today, that little annoyance would save her life.

The senior sprinted at her and cut the distance, driven to attack, to feed, to infect. Red eyes focused on the blond girl, who in life he thought was out of his league. Now, he just wanted a taste of flesh. She slowed and stood in front of the open, dark room and turned to wait. She bent her legs and held out her arms, one to each side like a soccer goalie awaiting a forward.

As he made his final approach, growl rising in his throat, Madison feinted to the right. The zombie committed to a lunge, and Madison jumped to her left. His foot caught the raised carpet, and he toppled headfirst into the A/V room. With a crash, he collided with the recording station, flipped over the desk, his arms and torso tangling in wires. Madison shut the door, entrapping the infected basketball player.

On the other side of the room, Brody ran from the other zombie, a kid he knew as Jerome. They were partners in biology class, until Brody was flunking, and his mother got him transferred to Nutrition Ed. Brody skipped around desks, searching for a weapon. He didn’t want to hurt Jerome, but was it even Jerome anymore?

“Sorry, man.”

A thick shard of wood lie on the floor near a pile of returned books, and Brody snatched it up on the run. Spinning, he planted his feet and swung it like a hatchet, burying the edge of the shard halfway into the infected teen’s head. Jerome collapsed, his momentum carrying him past Brody and into a magazine rack.

Madison ran up beside Brody. “Nice job. Is that the missing piece of the painting?”

Brody shrugged.

They both heard a light tapping and turned toward the sound. Aniyah was lying on the checkout desk, snoring loudly, one leg twitching.

“Should we wake her?” Brody asked.

Madison knew the girl was a goner. She had hoped her instincts were wrong. Even though she was always at odds with Aniyah, Madison had hoped she was wrong about her—that she wasn’t infected. Now, Madison was sure of the girl’s fate.

Striding to the desk, Madison picked a pencil out of a mug, closed her hand around it, and swung it down. The point slid into Aniyah’s eye and farther down until it hit something harder. Aniyah shook, spasmed, and went limp.

Brody ran over, his mouth hung open, startled. “She was…?”

“She was infected.,” Madison said. “It sucks. I’m sorry—I know you liked her. She was too far gone. Now, she’s at peace, I guess.”

The two Milfords walked away from the desk toward the staircase to the library’s second floor. As they went, Brody took the half-eaten candy bar out of his pocket and finished it.

“After we stop at our lockers, let’s go to the gym,” Madison said. “I want to see it for myself.”