They could hear waves lapping at the sides of the ship and the hum of the motor from the engine room belowdecks.
Zack squinted through the Caribbean sunshine. There was no other ship on the water, and they were the only ones on board. Twinkles continued to growl, baring his little canine teeth.
“It’s okay, Twinkles,” Zack said. “We’re safe.”
“Come on, it’s nothing. Let’s keep playing,” said Madison.
Olivia took her turn now, pushing the puck with the shuffleboard stick.
THUMP! THUMP! THWACK! Something was pounding savagely behind the elevator doors.
“Okay,” Zack said, pausing the shuffleboard game once again. “That was no engine.”
DING! The elevator doors parted and a raucous crew of zombified cruise staff busted onto the upper deck. There were lifeguards in green swim trunks and rezombified waiters in formal dinner wear. A cabin steward in a pastel-colored Caribbean shirt and white shorts dragged its feet across the deck. It stared at them with a dead-eyed sneer. Its mouth hung open and thick blobs of drool dribbled down its chin.
Twinkles charged toward the growing throng of ravenous brain-craving cruise ship employees. “Arf! Arf!”
The undead cruise staff staggered along the sides of the pool. They cornered Zack and the gang against the bow of the ship. There was no place to run. Nowhere to hide.
They had no other option but to throw down and fight.
In a flash, Zack grabbed a spare shuffleboard stick. “You want some?” he shouted at the rezombified crew. “Come and get it!” He gripped the shuffleboard stick like a bo staff and struck a ninja pose.
“Hold them off!” Ozzie said. “I’ll be back in a second.” As Zack and the others squared off against the undead, Ozzie bounded through the zombie fray and up the steps to the Astroturf driving range. A few moments later, Ozzie sprinted back down, brandishing four shiny titanium golf clubs that glinted in the sunlight. He tossed one each to Rice, Madison, and Olivia, keeping the fourth for himself.
Rice swung one of the golf clubs and conked the rezombified cabin steward in the noggin with a bone-cracking thwap. The brain-gobbling flesh-eater flipped over the rail and landed with a splat into a lifeboat. “One down, a bunch more to go. . . .”
“Unzombify them, Rice!” Zoe shouted.
Rice raced over to their supply of antidote gumballs sitting by the base of the stairs to the control room. He picked up both buckets and turned to face the undead throng of cruise ship staffers.
“Rice, watch out!” Ozzie shouted from across the deck as a rogue zombie waiter staggered around the corner. Rice spun on his heel, but the zombie toppled right into him. They crashed to the ground, and both buckets of gumballs flew out of Rice’s grip.
Zack’s jaw dropped as their antidote gumball supply cascaded onto the deck and rolled over the side of the ship.
“No!” Rice screamed. He dove headfirst like a baseball player sliding into second base. He hugged the floor and scooped up as many gumballs as he could before the rest of the orange-and-blue antidote spilled into the ocean.
Zoe bounded across the deck and snagged a badminton racket out of a bin. She spun like a kung fu ballerina and thwapped one of the oncoming zombies across the face. The racket strings stung its cheek with little red squares.
“Blargh!”
Olivia sprinted over to help her as the zombie came back for seconds. POW! Olivia kicked her leg straight out and nailed the undead freak square on its rump.
As the kill-crazy cruise ship staff stumbled along the deck, Ozzie unleashed a relentless barrage of karate chops.
“Phlarghf!”
WHAP!
BAM!
“Sphglurghplf!”
“Zchwquelgph!”
BOP! Ozzie froze in place, flexing his nunchaku after the last blow.
A trio of subhuman lunatics careened over the railing and into the lifeboat at the side of the ship.
“I don’t think so, bucko!” Madison sidestepped a rezombified waiter and bashed it in the face with her golf club, wiping out the sunburned maniac.
“Blarghph!” The zombie flipped over the side rail and fell thirty-plus feet, landing in the ocean with a plunk.
One by one they took out the rest of the zombies. Madison and Olivia began to lift the conked-out bodies and toss them into the lifeboat.
“Hey, guys,” Rice said, returning with his supply of salvaged gumballs. “I saved some.”
“Good work, Rice,” Zack said, clapping the zombie slime off his hands.
“Yeah,” said Zoe. “Good work being a big old klutz.”
“Hey!” said Rice. “I skinned my knee trying to save these gumballs, so I’d appreciate a little compassion.”
“Maybe Twinkles will kiss it and make it better,” Madison said as she and Olivia lowered the crank on the lifeboat of undeath.
“Now that we’ve zombie-proofed the ship, can we please hit the road or the water or whatever?” said Zoe. “We’ve gotta find Nigel Black. This whole zombie apocalypse thing is really starting to cramp my style.”
Zack watched the zombie horde float away for good as they continued on their way to Nassau. Good riddance, he thought. But he knew it wasn’t over yet. He crossed his fingers on both hands and the big toes on each of his feet. They were going to need all the luck they could get.
The midday sun blazed down on the tanning deck as the megaship cruised into Nassau. Zoe lay back in her pool chair next to Olivia and Madison, relaxing, catching some rays. They were all sporting sunglasses and sipping juice cocktails with little umbrellas in them.
Zack turned his focus to Nassau and the approaching coastline. The beach was strangely uninhabited, but the remnants of spring-breaking sunbathers were scattered everywhere. All kinds of chairs and umbrellas were left unattended. Smartphones and iPads, books and magazines were strewn on the beach, along with Frisbees and a flattened volleyball net.
Once Ozzie docked the cruise ship, they hurried down the plank to the seashore. Jumping onto the beach, Zack’s feet sank into the white tropical sand. It felt good to be on land again.
“Look at all this stuff!” Olivia said, plucking a transistor radio and a few iPhones out of the sand.
Madison picked a copy of USA Weekly off the beach and shook the sand out of the pages of the tabloid. “OMG!” she said. “What’s-her-face is dating what’s-his-face again!”
“Wait,” Zoe said. “I thought they were, like, totally done with each other?”
“That’s fantastic,” Zack said, rolling his eyes a little. “Now let’s go.”
“First of all, little bro,” Zoe sneered at Zack. “You don’t tell us what to do.”
“Yeah, I do,” Zack said. “When my older sister’s acting like a seven-year-old.”
“Umm, I’m pretty sure you don’t,” she said, and crossed her arms, shooting him an irritated glare.
“Zack, seriously, though,” Olivia said. “Where are we even going to start looking for this guy?”
“Yeah,” said Madison. “Are we just going to search this entire island?”
“If that’s what it takes,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“We’re open to suggestions,” Ozzie said. “If anyone has a better idea . . .”
Olivia rubbed her chin while they all thought. A few seconds later, her eyes lit up. “This Nigel Black dude used to catch wildlife for a living, right? And now he’s retired. So unless he sits around all day doing nothing, wouldn’t he do what he loves most? I’m guessing Nigel Black is still some kind of fisherman.” She pulled a tourist map of the island out of the sand and wiped some zombie slime off it. “Here,” she said, showing them the map. “There are two bait and tackle shops on opposite sides of the island. Why don’t we start there?”
“Good idea, Olivia,” Zoe said. “Boys versus girls. Whoever finds Nigel Black first wins.”
“What do we win?” Rice asked.
“You don’t win anything,” she said. “
Because you’re you.”
“Arf!” Twinkles chirped, ready to follow Zack, Rice, and Ozzie inland.
“Except for you, Twinklie-poo,” Madison said, picking up her pup and kissing him on the head. “You’re coming with the girls.”
Twinkles flashed a pair of weary puppy dog eyes at the boys and whimpered lamely as Madison carried her pet off with Zoe and Olivia.
“We ready to do this?” Rice asked.
“You know it,” Zack said, giving his boy a fist bump.
“Let’s roll out,” Ozzie hollered, and trotted inland toward the center of the island in search of Nigel Black.
Each holding a golf club and a couple of antidote gumballs in his pocket, the three boys snuck under a sign that read: WELCOME TO NASSAU. Ahead of them a massive swarm of rezombified spring breakers coursed through the streets.
Shirtless college boys wobbled in the daylight, their bodies sunbaked with peeling skin. Zombie girls wearing short denim shorts and bikini tops went wild, snarling and clawing. Flesh fell off the rezombified spring breakers’ sun-scorched shanks like meat off braised short ribs. A pig roast aroma wafted through the thick, sticky Bahamian air, which made Zack oddly hungry. The Nassau horde was a walking-dead barbecue.
The sun highlighted the satanic grimaces fixed on the zombies’ faces. At close range, the undead eyes were crazed with psychotic rage, bloodshot, and oozing blobs of lemon yellow slime.
The boys dodged and weaved through the zombie mayhem, knocking out undead beach bums left and right with their drivers and nine irons.
“Look,” Zack cried, pointing toward a wooden sign hanging over a storefront that read: BAIT AND TACKLE. “Up there!”
“Zack, watch out!” Rice shouted as two zombie spring breakers lumbered up behind him.
Zack spun around and ducked as a shirtless undead beefcake swiped for his head. He could hear a gravelly crunch in the zombie freak’s shoulder as its arm whizzed past his face. Zack leaped back and bumped into another zombie coming from the other direction. A twentysomething girl in a bikini raked her claws back and forth, clutching at the air. The bikini-clad zombie girl’s eyeball hung from its socket and dangled to her cheekbone from behind a pair of cracked sunglasses.
“Get out of there, bro!” Ozzie called to his friend.
Zack almost got caught in the melee of undead flesh-eaters, but he managed to muscle his way out of the zombie scrum.
The three boys weaved through the island of mutant spring breakers and rushed inside the bait shop. Zack locked the doors behind them and turned to have a look around the store. A thick, pungent odor hit his nostrils. He choked, covering his mouth with his shirt collar. Everything was turned completely upside down. Buckets of chum and sardines spilled across the floor. Fishing poles, nets, and rotating racks of bait hooks were knocked over, booby-trapping the ground.
Zack, Ozzie, and Rice split up to explore the shop, treading through the ankle-deep live bait.
Framed photographs hung on the wall. All of them featured a tan, bald-headed man with a thick, bushy beard posing with strange creatures in different parts of the world.
“Hey, guys,” said Zack. “I think we’re in the right place.”
“Is that him?” Ozzie asked.
“Think so,” Rice said, pulling out his smartphone. “Lemme check.”
While Rice inspected the photographs against the Google images, a loud crash rang out from the back of the shop. Zack’s heart skipped a beat.
“What was that?” he asked in a whisper. They listened but heard only the muffled drone of the zombies outside.
“Come on,” Ozzie said. “Let’s go check the back.”
Quickly, the boys trudged down the short hallway and opened the door to the back room. Except for a sharp beam of sunlight slicing through the only window, the room was too dark to see into from the doorway. Zack flicked the light switch, but the power was out.
“Nigel?” Zack asked softly as they stepped nervously into the shadowy room.
“Blarrggghh!” a zombie howled, and lunged out of the darkness.
“Whoa!” Ozzie jumped back into the hallway.
Out stumbled a scraggly zombie around sixty years old. Its tattered fisherman’s outfit hung from its lanky frame. Its skin was wrinkled like a raisin, and it smelled like boiled cafeteria meat.
“I don’t think that’s Nigel,” Rice said.
“Me neither,” Zack said.
Ozzie put up his hands, preparing to grapple the undead fisherman.
Its decrepit hand was wrapped around a fishing pole. The zombie cast its line at Ozzie, who dodged the airborne hook. The fishing hook flew through the stinking heat and snagged Zack by the shirt collar.
“Ahhhh!” Zack cried as the rezombified fisherman pulled back on the line and reeled him in. Zack slipped on the wet floor and ran in place like he was trying to run on a carpet of gumballs.
“Glarphle!” The zombie lunged for Zack, and they both hit the fish-covered floor with a yucky splat. The zombie crawled on top of him, clacking its undead maw repeatedly. “NOM-NOM-NOM!” Strands of toxic saliva stretched and snapped as the thing smacked its decomposing lips.
Zack shoved the palm of his hand upward under the jaw of the growling zombie to keep its flesh-hungry mouth away. He gripped him by the throat with the other hand. The zombie man gargled and bit the air ferociously.
“Hold on, buddy!” Rice flipped his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped the bag, pulling out a small bottle of ginkgo biloba. He twisted the cap off the bottle and poured out a heap of ginkgo capsules. He ran over to where Zack lay on his back and slammed the handful of ginkgo into the fisherman’s mouth. The zombie sputtered the capsules back into Rice’s face.
“Ahhhh!” Rice shrieked, and flinched back.
“Give him more!” Zack shouted, still fighting on his back. His hands were slipping. “He’s going to eat my face off!”
The zombie fisherman’s mouth was six inches from Zack’s nose. Zack strained his muscles with every ounce of strength he had, but the zombie had too much leverage. His arms buckled like someone trying to bench-press too much weight.
Rice reached for the zombie’s hair and grabbed a fistful, pulling back hard. The undead fisherman reeled away from Zack and screeched as Rice drove the whole bottle of ginkgo into the zombie’s slime-webbed maw.
“Gluggle-glarghle!”
The undead flesh-guzzler chowed down on the ginkgo and slumped to the floor in a full-on zombie coma.
Zack rose to his feet and grimaced. His entire backside was wet with rotting fish water. A little splash of vomit rose from his belly and burned the back of his throat.
“Ah, Zack,” Rice said, and plugged his nose. “You reek, son!”
“Shake it off, Zacky boy,” Ozzie said. “Come on, let’s see if we can find anything that tells us where this Nigel Black dude might be.”
The boys edged cautiously into the back room. Outside, the air still hummed steadily with the incessant wailing of the undead spring breakers.
Quickly, Zack, Rice, and Ozzie searched Nigel’s office for any hints as to the washed-up explorer’s whereabouts.
BANG! SLAM! CRASH! Glass shattered somewhere in the front of Nigel’s shop.
“Looks like we’re about to be the bait,” said Ozzie. “If we don’t want to get tackled, let’s grab what we can and get out of here!” Zack snagged a stack of important-looking folders out of the file cabinet while Rice snatched a DVD box set of Nigel Black’s Unnatural Wonders. Ozzie folded up what was on the desk: a sticky heap of yellow Post-its and a blueprint of some kind.
Rice stuffed the papers and DVDs into his backpack. Zack lifted open the window as Ozzie barricaded the door with Nigel’s desk. They all hopped onto the windowsill. The island zombies stormed through the shop, grunting and growling on the other side of the office door.
The boys hit the ground outside and hightailed it away from the bait and tackle shop. They trekked through the island shrubbery, staying off the zo
mbified streets. Soon, they reached a sandy path leading back to the beach and the cruise ship.
The ocean tide lapped at their feet as they sprinted along the damp sand. Ozzie rounded the point to the next bay, followed by Zack and then Rice. From there they could see the Fun World cruise ship towering over the beach, which was now overrun by undead vacationers. The girls were fighting off an endless herd of undead sunbathers and island dwellers as they made their way to the ship.
But even at a distance Zack could already see the zombies were taking over the pathway leading to the dock.
“Hurry up, guys!” Zack shouted. “Looks like they’re in over their heads!”
The boys rushed down the seacoast as fast as they could. When they reached the girls, Zoe, Madison, and Olivia were out of breath, losing more and more ground to the gathering horde of beach bums.
“Nice of you to show up!” Zoe blasted one of the zombies in the noggin with a beach umbrella.
“Did you find Nigel Black?” Olivia asked as she slammed an oncoming zombie hard in the jaw with her elbow.
“No, but we got some intel on him,” Zack said.
“Thank goodness! We have to get out of here. There are too many of these zombified spring breakazoids!” Madison shouted, clobbering one of the bikini-clad zombie surfer chicks in the abdomen with a stiff side kick.
They turned to make a run through the throng of rezombified mutants, but the undead mob was too thick to pass through.
“We have to swim out and climb up the dock!” Ozzie pointed out to the water and they took off running through the waist-deep surf.
They shimmied up the support pole underneath the dock and climbed onto the platform. The zombie herd continued to stagger up the dock toward the gangplank to the cruise ship.
“Run for it!” Zack cried, and they all sprinted back to safety before the undead spring breakers could cut them off.
Once they’d placed the Fun World cruise ship on autopilot, Zack walked down to the middle deck and went down the narrow corridor. He pushed through the door where his friends had gathered in the luxury cabin suite to study up on Nigel Black. The place looked like an upscale hotel room. Madison, Zoe, and Olivia had already made themselves comfortable on the couch. A big-screen television and a state-of-the-art entertainment system stretched across the wall in front of them.
Zombies of the Caribbean Page 2
