It seems as a typical day at Mooresville High School, home of the Pioneers. I, Taylor, see many students rushing to their classes, some giving their significant others one last kiss before first period, and others quickly slamming the dark blue locker doors shut. Luckily, I had just slipped into my classroom seconds before the bell rang. As the bell rings, I can see a few students run past my classroom door rushing to get to their class. They will probably end up in detention together for being late. As I was walking to my seat, I gazed around the gloomy classroom. Many kids are talking to their friends while others are finishing their breakfast, which looks delicious considering I missed breakfast today. Some perky senior comes on the loud intercom to ask everyone to stand for the pledge. "I pledge allegiance, to the flag...", I say just like any other normal day. The thing is though, this was not just any other normal day.
After reciting the pledge, we sit down and have a short moment of silence. Most of the students talk anyways. After the moment of silence, we all get back to work. A few moments later, the principal, Mr. Disney, comes on the loud intercom, nervousness in his voice. The class gets quiet to hear what he is about to say. "Everyone please stay calm. It seems that a zombie apocalypse has begun. It is very important for everyone to stay in your classrooms with the doors locked, until further notice." Stay calm? How could anyone stay calm at a time like this? Not one person was calm.
Jay, in the back of the class, starts to think about his family and he assumes that he can make it out of the dreadful school and go home to his family. He bolts to the door, unlocks it, and attempts to escape, ignoring that everyone is telling him to stay in the safe classroom. As he opens the door, zombies attack him. Jay had been bitten multiple times. He falls to the ground and ten seconds later, gets back up. His face was sunken in, eyes unfocused. His mouth drooled as he was craving something, anything. He bites the young girl next to him as the others are feasting on everyone elses flesh and brains.
I rush out of the room to find my cousin, Kelsey, in the next classroom over. Just then, our friend, Madison, bumps into us in the drag of all this mess. Madison looks at Kelsey and says, "Wouldn't it be horrible if Marcus was infected with the zombie virus? Kelsey, you would be so depressed!" Kelsey looks panicked, "Marcus! Has anyone seen him?! We have to find him!" She is panicked. "Kelsey and I will go find Marcus, you go find Bella and Alexis. Meet us in the cafeteria," Madison says to me as she is being dragged down the hall by Kelsey in a hurry. I understand why she is in such a hurry. Her and Marcus have been together for almost 2 years now. I couldn't imagine what she would be going through if she didn't find him, or even worse, if she found him and he was turned.
"I have to find Bella," I whisper to myself. She is Kelsey's best friend and one of my really close friends. What would Kelsey think if I didn't find her? I would be such a failure. Just when I walked around the corner, wondering if one of those dreadful things would be there, Bella rams into me. She knocks me off of my feet and hurrys to help me up off of the dirt covered floor. "There you are, Bella! We need to find Alexis and meet Kelsey, Marcus, and Madison in the cafeteria fast. Just then, my best friend, Alexis, walks around the corner. "Where are you going?", she asks, concerned. I grab her and Bella's arms and drag them down the hall. "Come on! We need to get to the cafeteria and fast!", I say.
We arrive at the cafeteria and we make sure it is all clear of zombies. I feel terrible calling them zombies since they're all my old classmates, the people I thought i was going to graduate with. Not very many people are in the cafeteria. I guess we were the only ones thinking that zombies wouldn't go to the cafeteria because they don't want tacos or pizza. They want brains. "Alright, we need to get moving. Everyone help move all of these tables and chairs in front of the cafeteria doors so the zombies can't get in!", yells Marcus. We do as we are told and fastly move all of the tables and chairs in front of the cafe doors. The zombies only invaded one side of the school. Thankfully, we are on the side that they have not yet invaded.
We can hear the blood curdling screams of the students and teachers throughout the halls. Everyone is running to the side of the school that has not yet been invaded, which is just causing the zombies to follow them. We watch one person after the other being bitten, falling to the ground, and standing up with the craving for human flesh through the door windows. Some people are so horrified they shakingly pause in their place and get infected. I wish that I wouldn't have to see all of this tragedy, yet I still watch my classmates turn into something so inhumane. I start to tear up as people in front of me are falling to the ground, dead, and standing back up, still dead.
The zombies start pushing on the cafe doors but the tables and chairs are to heavy for the zombies to move. I wish they would just give up already. The few people in the cafeteria are pushing on the opposite sides of the tables and chairs in hopes to keep the doors closed, but it seems the zombies have gained strength. All of a sudden it comes to me, raw meat! That's it! "Everyone, in the kitchen refridgorators there should be several boxes of raw meat. Put the meat on your clothing and act like zombies, just in case they get through the doors.", I loudly say to everyone, which attracts even more zombies. We all hurry to the kitchen refridgorators to find the raw meat. We find it and smear the bloody hamburger all over ourselves. Marcus finds a box of pizza cutters and hands them to everybody for weapons. The zombies push harder and harder on the doors until it finally opens. We all start dragging our feet and moaning like zombies. They are getting closer and closer to us. It seemed like our plan was working great! You can tell they are a bit confused because hamburger meat does not smell the same as human meat.
After a few slow minutes go by, a zombie drags itself behind Marcus. The zombie realizes that it is hamburger meat and that we aren't really dead. Kelsey screams and throws a pizza cutter at the zombie's head. It slides right over Marcus' head almost hitting him, he would most likely be dead right now if he wouldn't have ducked, but it had hit the zombie. Marcus turns around and stabs it a few more times to make sure it is dead. We are all relieved, but not for long. The other zombies realize what is happening and all hell breaks loose.
As the zombies are running toward us, we throw pizza cutters at them, but it just wasn't enough. We all run and hide in the kitchen cabinets. The zombies are too busy feeding on the helpless bodies' flesh for them to notice. I can hear their light, dragging footsteps walking past the dark brown cabinets. The zombies don't find us because they don't understand that the cabinets open. It seems we are the only survivors of the Mooresville High School zombie apocalypse. It is not over yet though.
I like the way that you're going with this but in my opinion, a little more detail would bump this story up a notch. Zombies are awesome but when you jump from one thing to another without stopping to give the audience some detail, it makes the story bland and uninteresting. But if you put in what the main character is feeling, what they see, hear, or even how they are thinking, that would be a story worth reading and enjoying.
Hey there! here to review as requested (sorry for the slight delay).
Okay, so, there are certain interesting aspects of this story. The group dynamics, for example. You have an entire slough of kids from all different sort of relationships (cousins, boyfriend/girlfriend, best friend, etc). Characters are, and always will be, my favourite aspect of any story. It'd be nice if you'd expand on what they're like and how they interact. I'd love to see more of that. 
However, there was... actually a lot of this story that I didn't particularly like. Firstly, it's very much like pretty much every other zombie apocalypse story I've ever read, and I couldn't (and this is probably going to sound horrid and I apologize in advance) figure out if I was reading something serious, or if I was reading a satire. The satirical feeling, I think, came from how flat everything was. One person mentioned that this story felt more like a skeleton/the overview of a story, and I think that I'd have to say that I agree with them. There was no emotion. The narrator had no personality. It felt like we were just reading a list of events, and it was, quite honestly, really boring.
Now, that's not to say that you can't change that, because what you have here has a lot of potential to be pretty dang awesome (as far as zombie apocalypse stories go; I hate them and if I seem too harsh, I apologize. It's probably because I have a strong bias against zombie stories). If you expand on it. And by expand, I really mean on two things:
1) Character development. Your character's personality, their voice (the way they sound in the writing), and emotions. Things like that. Because you seriously have none of it. It sounds like s/he's relaying what happened in a dream that s/he laughs at now, fifteen years later after the dream happens, to a friend. In a boring way. S/he literally just tells us everything that happens. There's no eluding. There's no showing. Just telling. Which brings us to point two:
2) Show, don't tell. And I really hate giving that advice, usually, because it's incredibly vague. But here's what I mean: You tell us everything that happens in very literal, very pointed sentences. It reads like a list, not like a story. To "show" us what happens, you need to use emotion. Don't say that your narrator was scared. Don't say that the surrounding people were scared. Use emotional descriptors. "They were all scared and everything was a mess" could be changed to, "There was terror in the eyes of every snot-nosed, quivering brat in the cafeteria. Their faces were all swollen and bright red, smeared with their tears and their mucous, and in the midst of it all, only a few of us were managing to keep any order in the place whatsoever."
I mean, that's terrible and don't use it, but it does a few things:
a) - it gives us an idea of your narrator's personality (of course, your narrator might also be super sweet and kind and gentle, in which case that passage would be far more empathetic and nurturing).
b) - it gives us a descriptive rundown of what's going on, and it reads with a little bit of emotion and spice and whatnot.
c) - it adds interest. There's something there to draw the reader in. Something that's not just list-like and dull.
Other than that, there were a few technical aspects:
The thing is though, this was not just any other normal day.
Hi there! Your title drew me in, so review I must. I see you conquered the formatting issue some people have in the Publishing Center, so kudos on that!
Nitpick time:
Everyone is rushing to their 1st period classrooms.
while others are finishing their breakfast, which looks delicious considering I missed breakfast today.
She knocks me off of my feet and hurrys to help me up off of the dirt covered floor.
Everyone help move all of these tables and chairs in front of the cafeteria doors so the zombies can't get in!", yells Marcus.
We do as we are told and fastly move all of the tables and chairs in front of the cafe doors.
Some people are so horrified they shakingly pause in their place and get infected.
"Everyone, in the kitchen refridgorators there should be several boxes of raw meat.
Now fanfiction is a totally different story, but let's stay on topic here.
Okay, so my first thought is, "Can they really be so gullible?" Just having a principal come announce that there's a zombie apocalypse would sound like a prank to most people. After all it is one of the most cliche scenarios out there. There has to be something that has happened or is happening to prove there really are zombies and everyone really is in danger; not until then would panic ensue.
Also, it just seems a little confused and too stereo-typical. I'm sorry, I know I sound like I'm being really mean, but this story really doesn't sound different from all the other zombie apocalypse things I've read. It needs something unique, something too hook the readers in right off the bat and make them think, "Oh, I've never seen it like this before. I wonder what will happen next." Maybe there's something unique about the zombies, or something unique about the character herself. Perhaps you could try some foreshadowing to make the readers curious about what is to come. At this point in time it still sounds like every other zombie story out there.
That being said, I really am sorry about my negative approach on this. I can sound like such a stuffed shirt sometimes! It has some of it's own flare--I love that they're using pizza cutters to fend off the zombies--and I'm sure it could be great. Just figure out what it is about your story that makes it different from the rest and display that, as well as adding more sensory detail to make it come to life--what do things look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, even taste like? Once that's done it'll be on its way to greatness, so to speak. Keep writing!
Well, as you already know, I love certain aspects of this. I love the principal's inordinate calm as he announces the arrival of the zombie apocalypse.
I'm not sure about your narrator's logic--the zombies won't come to the cafeteria because they want brains, not tacos? I mean, I don't think the zombies are thinking that much. I think they're just looking for people wherever they can find them. And...covering themselves in hamburger meat? Hamburger meat kind of looks like brains...and it may not smell like human meat, but I'd think it would still attract zombies. After all, human blood doesn't smell like fish blood, but if you go swimming while bleeding the sharks in the area will still go, "Ooh, free food!" You know?
My main complaint, however, is that right now this feels more like a summary than an actual story. You've got a good start--you've got a sort of outline, a plan for what happens in the story--but it's mostly the narrator telling us what's happening. There aren't many actual scenes, and very little dialogue. Not that I mind a lack of dialogue when there's a lot of action going on--but here you often just say things like "students talk anyway" or whatever instead of showing us any of the conversations. The narrator mentions seeing such tragedy, but I don't feel like the narrator actually feels the tragedy, so it's very hard for me to feel the tragedy myself. Do you know what I mean?
So my suggestion is to take this as an outline, flesh it out, and rewrite it so there are more specifics. Rather than just telling us what's happening, give us a little insight. How does your narrator feel about this? Has she (he?) always been a zombie apocalypse theorist? Does she (he?) pull a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide calmly from her backpack the moment the principal announces the attack while her classmates are screaming in terror around her? Does she (he?) arm herself with extra-sharp pencils?
Think about how she (or he) reacts to every specific event in the story. Then rewrite the story to reflect these reactions. Focus more on your narrator, what she's experiencing and feeling, and less on the general populous, and you'll have a much stronger story.
Blue
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