A/N-Sorry about the late update everyone! I had written a few pages, but when I woke up, the laptop wasn't charging and I lost the document. So I had to rewrite it and stuff. Anyway, on with the story!
Emma stood over the hole in the courtyard of West McKinley High School. The courtyard was a neatly trimmed rectangle of grass in between two buildings of the school. Now it had a grave-sized hole marring the otherwise perfect yard. The gardener was going to have a fit if he ever got back. Emma didn't care. Will was going to be buried properly.
He wasn't dead yet, and every other person was in the empty classroom where Will's bloody body lay, trying futilely to save him. Emma knew better than that. Her fiancée was dead, or at least, going to be dead very soon. That's why she had gotten Finn and Puck to dig the grave for her. She hadn't needed to say anything-she had found shovels in the gardener's shed, and had silently held them out to Finn. He had understood.
In her hands were the phone and its charger. They seemed so pointless to be the objects that had ended Will's life. The group had yet to try the phone, however. There was still that glimmer of hope. The phone still wouldn't bring Will back.
Grief finally overtook Emma, and she keeled over, kneeling at the foot of the grave, her face buried in her hands. The phone and charger had fallen in the hole, but it didn't matter to Emma. Let it be buried beneath six feet of dirt, just like Will.
~~~Sue's Office~~~
There was a complete lack of noise in the office. The five adults who were still alive couldn't think of anything to say. Emma's grave had said enough.
Burt broke the silence. "Alright, I can't stand this. Is anyone going to say anything?"
Sue had perched her chin on her clasped hands. "There's nothing to say. Will's gone." She said it with the utmost of sincerity. There was none of her usual sarcasm. She didn't have a smirk on her face. It was a very naked Sue-devoid of all hints of joking, sarcasm, or anger. On only one other occasion had anyone seen her like that, and that was when her own sister had died-and then, she had been overwrought with tears.
"He needs a funeral." Emma said. Carole smiled through tears and rubbed her back.
"He meant everything to those kids." Burt said. "Of course there'll be a memorial, Emma."
"What about the phone?" Roz asked. "Has anyone tried it?"
"No." Emma said. "I had it the whole time. I didn't use it." She put the phone on the table.
Burt sighed and grabbed the phone, dialed 911, and put the phone to his ear.
"Hello, emergency services here. What seems to be the problem?" An exhausted woman said on the other end, knowing full well what the problem was.
"Hi, we'd just like to know if you have any information on the disease." Burt said. "We're at West McKinley High School with a group of kids, and one teacher was just attacked by a man. The man did not have a heartbeat."
"I'm sorry sir, but we know just about as much as you do. Somehow this disease is bringing dead people back to life, just like in the movies. Also, much like their Hollywood counterparts, they can be killed only with a shot to the brain." The woman said. "The government has been working day in and day out to solve this. Right now we're ordering a nationwide quarantine. There will be daily updates at eight o'clock every night on the radio."
Burt closed his eyes in frustration. "Alright, thank you."
"And one more thing, sir." The woman said on the other end.
Burt paused to collect his thoughts before saying. "What is it?"
"The man that was attacked-did you get him through his brain?"
Burt swallowed hard. "I don't think that will be necessary ma'am."
There was a palpable silence before the woman said. "Thank you for calling, sir."
Burt did not reply and clicked the off button.
No one said anything. All five of them were thinking different things, and the silence was so thick they felt that they could touch it. No one could believe that the idea that the dead walked among them could be a real threat. It was an absurd idea. Zombies were only in movies-how had they killed their Glee teacher?
Roz finally broke the silence. "How secure is the school?"
"There's a chain-link fence around the whole school, and there are three entrances." Sue replied curtly, no hint of sarcasm in her voice.
"Should we go lock them up, then?" Burt quipped, worried about sending anyone out to shut the fence gates.
"They'll need weapons." Roz said. "My pool net worked well enough, but I was a fourth place loser in javelin throwing in the Olympics. I know as well as I know that Lautner kid is all kinds of fruity that no one could do that around here 'cept me."
"Well, Mohawk and Hudson are the strongest men here." Sue stated while chewing on a pen. "Give them a pair of baseball bats and they'll be good to go."
"No!" Carole shouted, panicked. "That's my son you're talking about. I know you're rather… Radical about how you do things, Sue, but they're just kids."
"No they're not, Carole." Sue replied evenly. "Both are eighteen. They can vote, they can see NC-17 movies, they're allowed to watch other people do the nasty, which Fetus-Face has been doing since he was an actual fetus. They're not little children. And who else would you want to do it? You're a doting housewife who never wears a single sensible thing in your life, Erma throws up when she sees blood, your husband has a heart problem, and frankly, I'm with child." Sue rubbed her belly for added emphasis. "They've been whacking baseballs with those things since diapers, how is a rotted, disgusting zombie head any different?"
"Because what just happened to Will could happen to one of our kids!" Carole yelled. "Look, could Roz at least go with them?"
"Yes ma'am I can," said Roz.
Carole put her head in her hands and sighed. "Alright. Go. There are only three entrances around the school anyway."
Roz pursed her lips and without a word, stalked out of the room.
~~~Choir Room~~~
All of the sixteen of the kids and Dave were sitting in the choir room in the same spots that they used to. It was almost exactly how it used to be, except Will's dead body was on a table in the front of the room with a sheet over him. His hand had fallen out and was dangling off the table, but no one had wanted to move it and touch his cold body.
There had been literally nothing they could do but watch their teacher die. He had been put in a spare classroom where they had all tried giving him medicine in vain. It had been chaos, with tear-stained teenagers and adults buzzing back and forth to their dying teacher's aid.
He had died in thirteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds, according to Kurt's watch.
"You know," Brittany said, breaking the silence and rousing those in attendance out of their stupor "Lord Tubbington said that everything ends up back where it started. Which is weird because right after that I found my pen."
Even Brittany's twisted logic couldn't get them out of their funk. But what she had said rung true among them all. They each thought of their first day in that classroom, and all of the things he had written on that whiteboard.
Hello
Whitney
Hair
Duet
Rachel, tears still silently streaming down her face, went up to the board and simply wrote Good-bye on the board, then signed her name as an afterthought. She left without a word.
Not long after that, Finn grunted as he got up and sloppily signed his beneath hers.
Getting the hint, each student signed their name on the board. First Mercedes. Then Tina and Mike. Then Sam. And so on, until the board was crowded with signatures and had one big Good-bye written across the middle.
Emma walked in long after the last kid had made their way out and saw the board. It made her choke with emotion, seeing a word written on his board like he used to do.
And in front of that board was him.
She pulled down the sheet so she could see his head. With the sheet covering his emaciated body, he looked almost normal, like he had just decided to fall asleep. His sweater vest and button-up polo were peeking out from beneath the sheet.
Emma smiled at the peace of it all. The room was absolutely silent, and it was very reminiscent of one of his classes. Except for the fact that there was a dead teacher covered by a sheet in the front of the room that is.
She sighed and pulled out the knife, which was the real reason she had come there. Emma raised the knife in front of her symbolically and slashed her index finger, sucking in air at the sudden pain. It was funny how only days before the sight of blood-and not even her blood-would have made her pass out. Yet here she was, slashing her finger for her dead fiancée. Before it began to heal, Emma pressed her bloody finger on Will's head and as if it was finger paint, Emma smeared the blood in a rough outline of a heart, which she quickly filled in. Opening a band-aid with her teeth (another big no-no in her book), she wrapped her finger.
The heart was slightly lopsided, and on any other normal day, Emma would've spent as much of the day as she could, fussing over the shape, trying to get it just right. Instead, she was oddly satisfied about the uneven heart. It helped her remember that this was the man that pushed her to get fixed of her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
"I'm so sorry this happened Will." Emma whispered. In the astute silence, it seemed far louder than it actually was. "Everyone misses you. I doubt that comes as a surprise to you though. Those kids loved you. They still do." Emma stopped. "Now I guess I'm just the crazy woman that talks to her dead husband."
Emma swallowed what felt like a ton of bricks and brought out the whole reason she had come there in the first place.
It was the long knife from the kitchen, gleaming with wall of its silent ferocity, Emma's blood still wet on the blade.
"I didn't ever think I'd have to do this Will." She said. "I don't think either of us did." As she said every word, the knife got ever so closer to the man she loved. "But if this is how the world will be, then I'll have to learn how to do these things." The point of the knife now rested on the heart she had just drawn. "You did so much for me. You weren't just a teacher to the kids. You were a teacher to all of us. You taught me how to overcome my fears. You taught me how to be a better person. You were even there for me through every broken heart.
"But you've done all you can, Will." Emma whispered her voice hardly even existential at all. "You've taught everything you need to. And it's time for you to rest. No disease can take that away from you because I'll always love you."
It surprised Emma how easily the knife slid into his forehead. She pushed with all she could as the knife dug its way through her heart and into his brain. He didn't bleed much, which relieved Emma because she didn't want to remember him with blood all over his face. What unnerved her was the sound. It sounded like a hand reaching into a pool of Jell-O. She stopped when the handle reached his forehead. Yes. That should be enough.
"Good-bye Will." Emma said taking the marker and writing her own name right beneath the word good-bye. She didn't make a sound as she slipped out of the room.
~~~Parking Lot~~~
"Y'all two meatheads ready?" Roz called across the lot.
Puck and Finn glanced at each other with a look of uncertainty. "Yeah, Coach." Puck called. "We're ready."
"Good." Roz said, and the three went off across the parking lot towards the main entrance.
The school was silent. The only sounds came from the syncopated steps of three pairs of shoes. It was the most unnerving thing imaginable. Before long, Finn broke the silence. "So, umm… Coach Roz, you didn't seem too fazed by all that zombie stuff."
Roz bit her tongue to keep from talking. Don't say anything and everything will be OK. "I did what was damn necessary in the situation. Nothin' more than that."
Puck cleared his throat before saying "Yeah, but it didn't look like it affected you at all. I'm the biggest badass here and I couldn't do anything."
Roz stopped walking before saying "You know what, boys, I won a Bronze damn Olympic Medal in '08 and I've seen more things than you ever will. I've seen Michael Phelps' unsurprisingly small glory hole, I've seen the dark side a Regis Philbin's moon-and it ain't pretty. So you can shut your damn bat caves for two seconds while we try to lock this place up."
Unabashed the two boys did keep quiet. They reached the main gate right after.
"Well, let's get this place locked up." Puck said, putting his bat down and reaching for the gate. With a loud creak, he began pulling the gate closed. About halfway shut, he heard a noise and stopped. "What the hell is that?" he said.
The answer came in the form of a slowly lumbering form walking up the road. He was breathing through his slightly ajar mouth. It was wet, wheezy sound. The dress shoes he wore were shuffling across the asphalt.
"Christ." Finn whispered.
Puck scowled and yelled. "This ends now!" He walked past the fence and stopped ten feet in front of the monster.
"Puck, what the hell are you doing?" Finn yelled and walked past the fence as well.
The zombie had picked up the pace seeing Puck. When he got close, Puck swung his bat, the zombie's head jerking left with the force of the hit. He let loose a choking sound as he crumpled to the ground. Puck bashed his skull again and a crack appeared in the man's head. With one final swing, Puck burst his head open with the force of a thousand bricks. Brains and blood flew everywhere as the undead man stopped moving. Puck spit on the man. "That's for taking our teacher."
Finn stopped dead in his tracks. "Puck…"
"What?" Puck grunted, his eyes never drifting from the corpse.
"You killed that man…" Finn whispered, his shoulders hunched.
"He was already dead Finn." Puck finally turned around. "Look, I have no idea if this will be a permanent thing, but if it is, you have to learn how to do this. What if it was Rachel they were attacking? They've already shown they don't care who they eat. They ate Mr. Schue, Finn. He's gone! And there's-"
"PUCK!" Finn yelled, pushing his friend out of the way and swinging towards a girl in a sundress who had just walked out of the trees. He had closed his eyes in fear and missed horribly, only hitting the girl in the stomach. Still, with the normal gurgling sound, the zombie went down. Finn opened his eyes and stared down at the girl who was lying on the ground in front of her. Already she was crawling towards Finn again. Finn was hunched over, stunned by what he had done. The girl grabbed on to his ankle and Finn yelled out in fear. Roz darted from the fence, but it was Puck who acted first and grabbed his bat from the ground and hit the zombie's head. He hit it again and the girl was still.
Both of the boys were catching their breaths when Roz reached them. "What the hell, Coach?" Finn yelled. "Why didn't you try to help us?"
Roz crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him. "Look at those dead zombies on the ground. You two did that. Why are you trying to ask me for help when you don't need it?"
Finn stood up and stared straight at the woman. "I don't trust you."
She laughed derisively. "That makes one of us. You think it makes a damn difference to me?"
"Stop it Finn." Puck said. "We don't need this."
Just then they heard more moaning and coming up from the road were three suit-clad men were walking towards them.
Roz swore under her breath. "Get behind the fence. Now!"
The three ran quickly to behind the fence and they locked the now-closed gate. "We need a car." Puck said. "Let's go get my truck and we can block off the fence."
"Alright." Finn said. The three of them got Puck's truck and by the time they had driven it back in front of the fence, the three zombies were banging away at the fence. They got out and walked away after bashing each of the zombies' heads in.
"Rachel will never hear about this, OK?" Finn said to Puck.
"Dude." Puck said. "No sweat."
Finn looked to Roz. "Don't look at me. I'm not getting involved in your twisted high-school drama."
They blocked off the other two gates the same way with other cars and without a word the three made it back to the cafeteria.
~~~Cafeteria~~~
"And that about sums up everything we saw." Finn said the rest of the group.
No one said anything. Then Puck spoke up. "But obviously the disease is getting worse. We need weapons and a set of rusty-ass baseball bats isn't going to cut it."
"We need guns." Roz said loudly.
This brought forth a maelstrom of conversation that was settled down by Sue. "Shut up everyone!" She yelled.
"How are we possibly going to get guns?" Rachel piped up from the front.
"There's a gun store a couple miles down the road. We could go there with a group of people." Puck said.
"We don't need to go straight to guns." Mercedes said. "We can think of something else."
"Mercedes," Sam said next to her. "Don't think about it like we're going to kill people. We're just going to kill inhuman things that shouldn't be alive, and a gun is the safe way to do it."
Mercedes bit her lip and didn't say anything and instead snuggled closer to her new boyfriend.
"We'll need money if we're gonna do that." Artie said. "That's if the owners are still alive."
"Everyone, pool your money in this front table." Sue ordered, tapping a round table near the lunch line. Every person put a little bit in and in the end the total came to four-hundred and twenty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents.
"This would only feed three children in Africa." Sue muttered. "But it'll have to do." She said, pocketing the money.
"Now, as many of you know, Sponge-hair Square-chin is in need of a funeral." Sue said. "Emma is already out there and before any of us are going to get heavy artillery, we have to go pay our respects.
Without a word, everyone followed.
~~~Funeral~~~
All of them except Joe, whose condition was worsening, walked outside. It was getting towards late evening and the sky was getting dark. A Will-sized bundle was already at the bottom of the hole. The kids had inadvertently gotten in order of when they joined. Rachel went first, and dropped a thin gold chain from around her wrist into the grave. "Good-bye, Mr. Schue." She said.
It went like that through each of the kids. After Rachel was Tina, then Artie, then Kurt, and so on. Each person left something for the teacher that had meant everything to them.
When it was over, Emma spoke. "I'm sorry to bring you out here. I just wanted a service for him." Tears were welling up in her eyes. "He was great man. I know how much he meant to you, and I'm sorry this happened to him. That's all we can say, I guess."
Together, all of them helped to cover Will's grave, and as soon as the last shovelful was put in, there was a sense of closure. Mr. Schuester's scar would always be there, but there was nothing they could do. All of them walked back inside soon after.
~~~Cafeteria~~~
There was a general murmur about who would go. They didn't want a large group to go, so they settled on five-enough for one car.
"Well, obviously Roz will go since she did so well with the fences." Burt said. Roz nodded in agreement.
"Puck and I'll go." Finn said. Rachel squezzed his arm in encouragement.
"I think I should go." Blaine said. "Kurt and I talked about it, and we agreed." The latter had his face in his hands.
"And I'll go too." Dave said next to him. "I know most of you still don't like me, but I need to pull my weight around here, and this'll be a good way to do it."
"Alright, is everyone in agreement?" Sue asked. There was still general dissention because no one wanted anyone to leave, but in the end it was decided. Roz, Finn, Puck, Blaine, and David were to leave, with a walkie talkie from a school closet to call in case anything went wrong. The group walked out to the lot with them, and together the five in question got in Burt's car, and after a gentle good-bye, the five of them drove off.
A/N-Sorry about the late update everyone, I've just been so busy lately. Thanks for all the reviews and favorites, they mean so much to me :) I want to try to get a regular update day going, so I think maybe every other Sunday would work. Anyways, I'm very excited about this story as the plot's beginning to thicken and we get deeper and deeper into the plot. Thanks for reading and as always, a review would always be greatly appreciated. :)
