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nightmare.”
    Meths is the biggest guy in our year, and the oldest. He started school a year later than most of us and has been held back twice. That’s where he got his nickname, short for Methuselah. I wish I could lay claim to that but it wasn’t one of mine. I’d no idea who Methuselah was until someone explained it to me.
    “You can copy my notes later,” Kray says seriously.
    “Notes?” I take the bait.
    He holds up a drawing. Kray’s a much better artist than me. The picture is of La Lips, naked, being given some after-school tuition by a very animated Jonesenzio.
    I smother a laugh and raise my knuckles for him to knock. “Don’t let Copper see it,” I gasp.
    “I was hoping he could correct any anatomical inaccuracies,” Kray says.
    “Like you haven’t seen La Lips in the swimming pool,” Meths snorts, and this time we all have to smother laughs. It’s an old story thatLa Lips shows everything in the public pool if you give her a quid. No truth in it as far as I know, but when did that ever stop a good story?
    History ends (if only!) and we roll out into the yard for lunch. I swipe a bag of chips and nick a bar of chocolate from a girl in a lower year. She tries to fight me for it but her friends pull her off. I sneer as they haul her away. She had a narrow escape. In my current mood I’d have happily taken her into the toilet and half drowned her. If her friends hadn’t pulled her clear when they did…
    I spend most of the break with Meths, Kray, Trev, Ballydefeck, Suze, La Lips, Copper, Dunglop and Elephant. The usual gang, except for Linzer and Pox, who are off somewhere else.
    There’s a new zombie clip circulating on the Internet. Copper shows it to us on his phone. It’s footage of an undead soldier. If the clip is genuine, it looks like he was one of the team sent in to eliminate the Pallaskenry mob. He must have been infected, got away, tangled with some humans later.
    In the clip, several men are pounding the zombie with shovels and axes. One of them strikes his left arm a few times and it tears loose. Another of the men picks it up and starts whacking the zombie over the head with it, cheered on by his team.
    I laugh the first time I watch the clip. Most of the others do too. It’s comical, a guy being slapped around with his own severed arm.
    Then, as Copper replays it a couple of times, I start focusing on the finer details. The terror in the men’s eyes. The rage and hunger in the soldier’s. The flecks of dried blood around his mouth, a signthat he must have fed prior to his run-in with the vigilantes. The long bits of bone sticking out of his fingers. His fangs.
    The clip stops with the guys hitting the zombie, leaving us to guess how it ends. I imagine one of the group chopping off the soldier’s head with an ax, the men pulping it beneath their feet, not stopping until every last scrap of brain has been mulched. That’s how they kill zombies in films, by destroying their brains. Does that work in real life too? I assume so but I’m not sure.
    There’s silence when Copper turns off his phone. We’re all troubled by what we’ve seen. We can’t even make a joke about it. Not yet. It feels too real at the moment. We need time to absorb and then dismiss it.
    Elephant starts rabbiting on about soccer in order to break the solemn spell. He’s a real fanatic, goes to matches all the time. I watch the highlights on TV most weeks, so that I can discuss the goals with the others, but soccer bores me.
    Elephant finishes moaning about the weekend’s match and pauses for breath.
    “Enough already,” I snap. “You’re driving me crazy.”
    “Who rattled your cage?” Elephant scowls.
    “You did,” I tell him. “And if you don’t shut it, I’ll cut you down to size.”
    Lots of catcalls, everyone relieved to have something else to think about, welcoming the distraction. Elephant didn’t get his nickname because he’s tall or fat, but because of what his mates saw the