Author: Ridhima Ghai, Class VIII D
Movies. That’s the only place I had ever seen such a scene.
But let’s start at the beginning.
I was at school, our second period had just ended and it was recess time! Keya, Rhea and I usually just play tag, but we’ve gotten a little bored for the past few days, so we were thinking of a new game. Suddenly, I had an awesome idea – Zombie Tag. A few of us act like zombies, who try to tag the others, who are ‘humans’ trying to escape.
However, we were too few in numbers to play such a game, so we shared our idea with the class, and don’t ask me why, but ALL of them wanted to play. And so the game commenced, with the boys acting like zombies (I’m sure they have a lot of experience doing that), and the girls screaming and giggling and running around.
We were just beginning to have fun when Mrs. Iyer came rushing out of the teachers’ staff room and started to scold us. Keya knew it was important, but she was more focused on trying not to laugh at Rohan, who seemed to have something smeared around his mouth—ugh! She nudged me, and I turned to look. My first thought – super disgusting, but then I noticed something strange. Perhaps I was imagining things because of my teacher’s high-pitched voice, but he almost looked like a REAL zombie.
I decided to brush off the thought, and turned my head. “AAAGHH !”, a zombie, this time, I was sure it was a real one, barely two centimetres away from me. I ran as fast as I could, but it felt like I was stuck in a trance. In severe panic, I looked for my friends. Rhea was shouting for help, Keya was running in every possible direction.
What had I done? Why did I have to play this game ? And most important of all – Were zombies taking over our school ? I could feel myself trembling.
“We need to end whatever this is,” I could barely see Rohan through the fog, “fast”.
“I thought you had turned into a zombie” I replied.
“If you had paid attention, the place where I was standing was replaced by a zombie,” he answered.
Our minds were working fast, this had to end. Suddenly, Rohan shouted something about zombie comics, I couldn’t really hear him so I shouted back “What ?”
“I. read. in. a. zombie. comic that sunlight burns them.” he yelled.
“That’s not true”, surely a stupid comic couldn’t fix real life’s problems. I didn’t believe him.
He grabbed a zombie and threw it out the window, the glass shattered into pieces. At first, nothing happened, but then parts of the zombie’s body began to turn into ashes. His solution was working. I grabbed another zombie, my entire body trembling looking at its face, but I gathered all my courage and flung it out the class window.
I felt confident now, and shouted the solution to Rhea and Keya (I was shouting in a random direction, but I hoped they could hear me). And soon, the only sound to be heard was that of shattering windows and falling flower pots. One by one, the zombies were dealt with. The fog created by the zombies started to clear out.
Suddenly, someone hit me hard on my hand. I blinked my eyes and saw my teacher standing, glaring at me. “Sorry mam.”
There had been no zombie apocalypse, for a fact, the bell hadn’t even rung yet. It had all been a dream.
