His first bullet hit Old Man Bonham in the throat, making a squishy noise as it did so, and went right on through, breaking the window. Tinkling glass fell outward.

The math teacher staggered, recovered, and kept right on coming, his hands reaching out to grab whatever they could of the juicy morsel of living meat.

They didn't grab anything, however. Terry didn't miss.

Old Man Bonham's head flew apart, doing a neat redecorating job on the room's walls. Grayish-green gunk blotted out some of the X's and Y's on the board. The body's arms flailed around for a second or two before the math teacher fell backward onto the floor.

"No more homework, no more books..." Cord said.

"No more teacher's dirty looks," Terry finished.

The smell of cordite stung their noses, but it couldn't blot out the stink of death.

"Right," Cord said. "Let's go to the copier room."

The door to the copier room was locked, and they had to break in.

It didn't take them long.

"Goddamit," Terry said. "You said to leave the boards out here." They looked around, but the skateboards were gone.

Cord had to admit that it was his fault. "I didn't think there'd be anyone around to steal them."

"Well somebody sure did," Terry said. "Where the hell are they?"

Cord didn't know. He looked all around the school grounds, but he didn't see anybody. Far off down the block, a couple of dead dudes tottered out of an alley, but they were too far away to worry about.

Then they heard a familiar susurration. Both looked to the left, up the broad walk that circled the school building.

"What's that?" Terry said.

The words were hardly out before two dead dudes cruised around the corner atop the missing skateboards. Their ragged clothing flapped in the breeze as they sailed along. Their balance was bad, and their arms waved wildly as they desperately kept themselves erect. One of them had been a woman. Her stringy black hair blew back in the airstream.

"Holy shit," Terry said, gaping at the spectacle, unable to act.

Cord was no better. Both of them just stood there and let the deaders smash into them. Cord was holding the copies he had made. White paper covered with black lettering flew everywhere.

Terry and Cord fell to opposite sides of the walk, clawing at their pistols. The zombies grappled at them, trying to bite them any way they could, any where they could.

Cord's right arm was pinned. He couldn't reach his gun, but he slipped the Mark II out of its sheath on his left leg. The dead dude was under Cord, his mouth snapping at air. Cord waited for it to open and drove the combat knife between the teeth, pinning the head to the ground.

The zombie thrashed around, flopping and kicking in a frenzy, what remained of its teeth clicking on the knife blade, and Cord was able to pull away and get up.

He looked across the walk where the dead dudette was forcing her mouth down toward Terry's left cheek. Terry was trying to hold her off with both hands pressed against her forehead. Actually, they were practically in her forehead, since the dead skin was a bit mushy and tended to peel off easily and the bones sometimes cracked like thin porcelain. You'd think that a teenager could easily overcome a somehow-animated body, but the zombies were a hell of a lot stronger than you'd think.

Cord had his Glock ready now, but he couldn't shoot from his current angle. He lay down on the sidewalk on his stomach and pulled off a shot that went through the side of the dudette's head. It exploded all over Terry, who sprang out from under the shuddering corpse, wiping frantically at his face and shirt.

"Shit!" he said. "Shitshitshitshit."

"Did she get you?" Cord said. He was up now, still holding the pistol ready. He didn't want to have to shoot Terry, but he would if it came to that.

Terry calmed down immediately. "I don't think so," he said. "You better look me over, though."

Cord did, keeping the Glock handy, but as far as he could see Terry was free of bites.

"You swallow any of that shit?" he said, pointing with the Glock at Terry's chin.

There was phlegmy goo dripping down from Terry's cheek where the zombie had slobbered on him. He swiped at the goo with his hand and flicked it from his finger onto the sidewalk where it landed with a wet, snot-like plop. "Nah," he said. "I didn't swallow any of it."

Cord went over to the zombie with the knife in its mouth. It had stopped flopping, but Cord put a bullet through its head before he pulled out the knife. Just in case.

"I'm not sure the sock hop is worth all this fuckin' trouble," Terry said as they were picking up the flyers.

"I am," Cord said.

Mary Sue Taylor was, too.

"I think it's just wonderful," she told Terry when he handed her the flyer. "I think you and Cord are just about the two bravest men I ever heard of." They were standing on Mary Sue's front porch, and she was holding a flyer in her right hand.

"Heh-heh," Terry said. "Well, heh-heh."

He hated himself when he got all simple, but he couldn't help it. Mary Sue Taylor affected him like that. Hell, she affected practically every male in Hallville High like that except for a couple of guys who spent all their change on men's body-building magazines. Mary Sue had blonde hair and blue eyes and the best chest in town. Long legs that she didn't mind showing off. Lips that seemed to promise all sorts of lubricous acts, at least three-quarters of which were illegal in a majority of the southern United States. And a husky voice that promised even more.

Mary Sue had lost her mother early on, when Mrs. Taylor had been zombiefied after getting bitten on the calf by the already-dead paperboy, who was lurking in the bushes by the porch. Mary Sue's father had been forced to blast his wife's head off, and he had been very strict with Mary Sue ever since. In fact he was sitting in the living room right now, just out of earshot, with a Remington pump shotgun across his lap, waiting for anyone to make a false move.

"The only trouble is," Mary Sue said. "I don't know if Daddy will let me out of the house."

"Heh-heh," Terry said. "Well, heh-heh."

"You might have to sneak out," Cord said. He wasn't rendered speechless in Mary Sue's presence the way Terry was, though he could feel a certain stiffening in his character. "That's what everybody's going to do."

"Yeah," Terry said. "Heh-heh."

"Well, I'll sure try," Mary Sue said, sneaking a glance over her shoulder into the living room. "I guess you two are gonna be there for certain."

"Right," Cord said.

"Heh-heh," Terry said.