Chapter Text
This Ain't Your Daddy's Army of Darkness
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Author: B.H. Ramsay
Disclaimer: I own nothing, and I claim nothing, which is what YOU'LL get if you sue me; nothing. Consider yourselves disclaimed.
Rating: Mature
Dedication: Thanks ever and always to Reikson and Drakependragon
Summary: Xander's undercover work at San Romero High School is the stuff of nostalgia; zombies, the undead, and all.
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Chapter One
8
9
8
Like most teenagers, the kids of San Romero High School thought they were trapped in a living breathing Hell.
And between overdue homework, overamped hormones and and the Lord of the Flies atmosphere that predominates the average American high school campus, why not?
But San Romero High's newest teacher Xander Harris had a lot experience with such things.
He had not only grown up on the Mouth of Hell AND helped to save the world multiple times, but he'd survived high school while doing it.
So when he arrived one morning at San Romero High for another day of substitute teaching and found the place overrun with zombies on the lurching march, he didn't freak out the same way that so many other people there were doing.
No, he upshifted his car and aimed it right at a moaning zombie, slamming into the thing and pinning it to the side of a bus.
He shoulderolled out the door and grabbed the screaming jock that he'd just saved and slapped him hard to shut him up.
"Hey, what the fuck was that for?!?" the young quarterback sputtered.
"I'm sorry, did you not just see the zombie about to rip a chunk outta your throat?" Xander snapped, jabbing a finger at the bus and its undead… victim, still thrashing wildly trying to reach them.
Johnny Football Hero gapped disbelievingly. "That's a zombie... that's a real freaking zombie." He whimpered.
Xander snorted, "Welcome to the real world Junior," he muttered, "Head for the school, grab anyone you find, and take 'em to the shop class."
"The shop class?" he sputtered indignantly.
"Don't argue with me, just go!" Xander snarled, shoving the jock forward. He waited until he was alone before opening up his car trunk and pulling a fire axe from it.
When he got to the snarling zombie, it kept on reaching for him with its decayed hands, and the demon hunter sighed wearily.
"I wish there was more I could do for you, kid." Xander mused. "But like the movie says; sometimes dead IS better." A single decisive swipe through the air later, and the zombie's skull was promptly split in twain down to the nose before he yanked the blade out and quickly cut its head off for good measure.
Reaching into the car trunk, he pulled out a high-powered crossbow. Slapping a repeater chamber into the body of the modified weapon, he marched out the middle of the lane and grinned broadly. For all that Andrew was obsessed with movies, even crappy ones, he occasionally had decent ideas.
For instance, there was the automatic crossbow from that 2004 Van Helsing movie starring Young Wells' man-crush; Hugh Jackman. After he'd seen the movie, Andrew had managed to whip up a fully-functional design that had saved a lot of lives.
Then he heard another scream, and turned to see a cheerleader running for her life.
The girl was running from a crowd of zombies that were staggering towards him, howling and snarling.
He grabbed the frenzied student and slung her bodily behind the protection of the car as he fired into the crowd with his crossbow hand.
As the crossbow quarrels flew through the air, the undead began to fall as he carefully picked off each revenant with a well-aimed shot to the head. Rapid-fire was no good in this situation, after all.
When the repeater chamber clicked empty, he quickly replaced it with another from the trunk, but the fiends kept coming for them and were relentless, as undead hordes of Hell tended to be.
The cheerleader, the poor kid, was of absolutely no help at all. As if she agreed with him, she whimpered miserably and whined, "We're gonna die, aren't we?"
"Somebody's gonna die, anyway." Xander growled, furious at the body count. Reaching into his car trunk again, he pulled out a large plastic can and tested its weight.
The car's extra fuel can, to be used only in dire emergency. Of course when you've grown up on a Hellmouth, your definition of emergency grew to include stuff the Auto Club couldn't begin to understand.
He could hear fuel sloshing around inside and smirked, knowing just what exactly he had in hand, before giving it a hard toss.
As the canister flew through the air, he peppered the container with bolts from the repeater crossbow and watched as its pyric contents sprayed out and doused the revenants shambling towards him.
Once he was certain that the zombies were properly soaked in accelerant, he set off a road flare, tossing the burning ember at the crowd. With no small amount of satisfaction, he watched as the shambling crowd went up in flames.
A few stubborn zombies continued to advance, but Xander was done playing nice.
"You might wanna get clear of the car, kid," he murmured and the girl nodded frantically, scrambling to hide behind him as he slowly moved towards his car.
Tossing another road flare into the car's gas tank, he managed to leap clear as a mighty roar heralded a shockwave that threw him and the girl to the ground. Billowing orange flames and shrapnel hurled through the air, taking out what few zombies that remained upright and moving, as the car's burning hulk flipped through the air end-on-end before crashing down upon the ground and crushing several more zombies nearby.
The girl stared up at him. "Who… are you?" she asked him softly, not expecting an answer.
"Xander Harris. I'm the substitute shop teacher." As if to accentuate the fact that he was lying through his teeth, the school bus that he'd t-boned earlier now exploded behind him, making him flinch reflexively.
"Shop teacher?"
"Mm-hmm," he nodded sagely, glancing at his watch. "Last I checked, it's after nine am, which means that you should be in class."
"You're telling me to go to class now?!?" she shrieked indignantly. "After everything that's happened?!? With all these mondo-icky zombies on the loose and munching on people?!?"
"Yeah, I am," he nodded, picking up his crossbow and slinging it over his shoulder before reaching for his axe. "If I were you, I'd go for the shop classrooms. They're way more defensible, and right now, defensible is good."
The girl turned to stare at the still burning bodies of the restless dead, looking unsure.
"Hey, yesterday your biggest problem was if you'd get caught cutting class," the Scooby hissed, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to look at him directly. "Today, you just survived being ripped apart by zombies. Do what I say, when I say it, and I promise you that you'll live long enough to find out what happens to you tomorrow."
The girl nodded and ran for the school building. Xander waited until she was well on her way in, before following her into the school.
Whatever survivors were still alive would be fleeing in all directions, hoping to find some kind of safety. He'd have to round them up and barricade them somewhere safe soon, and was hoping that he didn't have to call Riley for help.
Involving the US government in something like this meant nothing good, especially since they'd put a priority on containing the zombies even if it meant nuking the town of San Romero off the map and trying to find a way to cover it up.
But with smart phones being commonplace, and social media websites everywhere on the Internet, he didn't think that this incident could be kept classified and away from the public eye. At least, not for very long.
Xander sighed. He'd come to the local High School following rumors of suspicious Internet activity that had been tracked back to San Romero, California.
Someone had been doing some deep digging on Google, looking for bad mojo, and their search words had set off Willow's online monitoring alert worms.
Alarm bells had really started ringing when someone in San Romero had successfully bid for some of the most powerful and nastiest dark magic grimoires from E-Bay.
For his part, Xander had been hoping to head off any trouble BEFORE it mutated into the chaos currently surrounding him.
But he shrugged fatalistically. Zombies were a bad sign, but not a deal breaker.
It might still be possible for him to put the brakes on this Apocalypse in the making.
"Starting to wish I'd taken the girls up on the offer for back-up," he sighed. "Dealing with this all on my lonesome looks like it's gonna be tough."
As fate would have it, Xander wasn't going to face San Romero's zombie hordes alone.
If he'd just stayed outside a little longer, Xander would've seen a pretty teenage girl in a cheerleader outfit hacking and slashing her way through the zombie hordes with a rainbow-painted chainsaw.