VIU: Zombie Invasion Part IV The Conclusion

Nabil writes Part III

And here is the conclusion!

“Coffee! We need coffee!” I cried. Sustenance would be required if we were to hold off the zombies. That and I was beginning to feel the effects of three late night essay-writing sessions. “Curse those essays for limiting our zombie-fighting powers!”

Becka and Jacqui each grabbed a coffee carafe from the Jumpin’ Java, and we headed into the main library.

“Cups! Paper cups!” Nabil ran back into the coffee shop and grabbed the cups. “Okay, we’re good.”

“Lets move people!” I scouted out the library, my familiar stomping ground. Those without weapons headed to the reference section, to collect some ammunition. We wheeled several carts from behind the desk and loaded them up with the most back-breaking of tomes and took them up the elevator to the forth floor.

The zombies pushing at the glass of the front doors. As we were headed up the elevator with a second trip of carts, Gareth ran up to us. “Well, they’re coming through.” He looked at the carts. “You’re going to chuck books at them?”

“Yup.”

“Okay.” Gareth reached into his knapsack and pulled out his copy of Spirits in the Wires, he slapped it onto one of the carts. “Lets go.”

On the forth floor we lined up the shelving carts at the top of the stairs. At the top of the fifth floor stairs, Jacqui and Becka set up the coffee station.

Everyone gathered at the base of the forth floor stairs for an informal speech-gathering scene. The kind that’s all moving and rallies the troops to great enthusiasm even though they’re headed to their death. Nabil held up The Rhetorical Tradition. “This book and I have been through a lot together,” he sighed. “I say it needs to take out a few more zombies.”

“Yes!” We all cried, shaking our respective weapons in the air.

“Just remember,” I said, tapping the closest book trolley poised at the top of the stairs. “Books do save lives. And this is the best use some of these are going to see!” The crowd chuckled. “Also, if we survive, you’re all helping me put these back on the shelves.” The chuckles stopped mid-chuckle.

“Wait’a be a mood killer,” said Nabil.

I shrugged. Glass shattered downstairs. “Lets kill some zombies!”

“Huzzah!” the troops cried, and we positioned ourselves behind the carts, waiting for the zombies to find us.

It didn’t take long and as they staggered up the stairs we responded, sending carts over the edge; they piled up on the landing, creating a barrier. It seemed all too soon that we ran out of carts. “To the forth floor,” yelled Jacqui over the clatter of the last cart. The zombies were beginning to climb over the books, leaving bloody trails on the pages from their earlier snacks.

“Hey!” I yelled at one particularly blood-fouled zombie. “That’s really crossing a line. You can’t treat books like that! You’re leaving a bloody footprint!” Becka and Riley dragged me away and up the stairs to the forth floor. “Sorry,” I apologized when I came to my senses, “but there are some things you just can’t do to library books.” Everyone nodded sympathetically.

We had a minute, maybe two, before the zombies made it over the book barrier. I grabbed a coffee. Strong stuff. Perfect.

The zombies began to climb the stairs toward us, moaning, staring through us with their dead eyes. Desiree looked at the cup of coffee in her hand. “I guess this is the end,” she said, and chucked the remains of her coffee into the face of the lead zombie.

The zombie recoiled. It’s skin began to bubble and burst and flow with bloody puss.

“The coffee! Throw more coffee on them!” Jacqui and Brianna grabbed one of the carafes and moved toward the stair edge. Becka pulled off the top. And together they flung a third of the contents on the pack of zombies. We wasted no time and set upon them with our weapons. We continued, down to the third floor, fighting our way toward the elevator, invigorated by the power of coffee. Down the elevator we went. There were zombies everywhere but it didn’t matter, even after the carafes were empty. We were stronger, invincible. No plan needed to be made, the goal was clear. We just had to get to the coffee shop and hold up there.

I thought back to my research paper. Coffee would save the day, again.

***

And that it did. We held off the zombies, and soon the onslaught abated.

Once the students returned to school the Jumpin’ Java saw a massive surge in popularity when they began printing their cups with the slogan “It Kills Zombies.” They did not recruit one of the heroic creative writing students to come up with the slogan.

As for us, life went back to normal. We did what we always did before the zombie invasion: we sat around on our crappy lounge furniture and came up with scenarios for what we would do if the zombie invasion came, and we drank a lot of coffee.

And yes, I did make them help me re-shelve the surviving books. To this day, I have not been forgiven.

The End

Happy Zombie Hunting
Kaitlyn Till