Zack sat down at the desk next to Ozzie and added to Ozzie’s pile the files he’d grabbed from the bait shop.
“Time to get to work,” Ozzie said. “The first step to tracking down a person of interest is to gather as much intelligence as you can on them.”
“What are we waiting for, Ricey-poo?” Zoe said. “Let’s watch and see what we can find out.”
“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses already.” Rice knelt in front of the television and popped in the first DVD of Nigel Black’s Unnatural Wonders.
“He doesn’t kill these things, does he?” Madison asked, looking at the DVD packaging. “Because if all he does is catch these poor weird-looking creatures and kill them, then I don’t want to watch.”
“Yeah,” said Olivia. “I second that emotion.”
“Would you ladies take a chill pill?” Rice said. “He doesn’t kill them. He just captures them and studies them.”
“OK, well, in that case . . . ,” Olivia approved.
Rice walked over to the cabin window and pulled down the shade, darkening the room as the TV glowed with the show’s introduction.
“Greetings,” a voice said over a blank screen. “My name is Nigel Black. Welcome to Unnatural Wonders.” The television flashed to a shot of the bow of a sailing ship. Nigel Black stepped into the frame, great gusts of oceanic wind ruffling his clothing. “Today we are on the Pacific Ocean looking for the albino electric eel said to inhabit these waters. . . .”
Rice paused the DVD. “I don’t know, maybe we should go back to Nassau,” he said. “This dude could still be a zombie.”
“Well, if the zombie expert got himself zombified,” Madison said, “he’s probably not that much of a zombie expert. Just saying.”
“You guys got anything over there?” Olivia asked Zack.
“Not much,” Zack said. “Just some bills and some orders for fish. Nothing about where he might be. What about you, Oz?”
“No,” he said. “Just a bunch of random legal documents.”
“Wait a second,” Zack said, looking back at Nigel’s papers spread out across the tabletop. He pulled the blueprint out of the mess of papers and held it up. “Check this out.”
“What is it?” Ozzie asked, looking over Zack’s shoulder.
“It’s a blueprint of a house,” Zack said.
“That’s no house,” Ozzie said. “That’s a freakin’ fortress!”
The rest of the gang gathered around Zack and stared at the blueprint. After a long pause, Olivia pointed at the bottom left-hand corner of the plan. “I think those are coordinates.”
“Good eye, cuz,” Madison said. Rice punched the coordinates into his smartphone. His eyes bulged at the touch screen. He turned the phone so the rest of them could see. Zack squinted at the search results and saw that the coordinates matched up to a small Bahamian island a few miles off the coast of Nassau.
“Jackpot,” he said.
“Come on, girls,” Rice said. “Our work here is done. Let’s go catch some rays before the sun runs out.” Zoe, Madison, and Olivia went out to the sundeck with Rice.
Zack took a deep breath and let out a long beleaguered sigh. His eyes started to lose focus. He realized he hadn’t slept a wink in nearly twenty-four hours. He felt Ozzie’s hand clamp down on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” Ozzie said. “We’re going to find this guy.”
“I hope so,” Zack said in a quiet voice. “I really hope so.”
“Take it easy, man. I’m gonna go reroute the ship,” Ozzie said, and burst out of the cabin suite in a flash.
Zack stood up from the table and lay down on the couch. He felt like taking a nap, but before he could catch a wink, a shrill bark from Twinkles chirped through the sea breeze. Half a dozen footsteps clattered down the hallway and stopped outside the door.
“Zack, come quick,” Madison said, out of breath. “We’ve got trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” he asked, sitting up.
“Super zombie trouble,” Olivia said.
“Ha-ha, nice try,” said Zack. “But I’m not falling for that.”
“Fifty bucks says there are super zombies chasing us right this second,” Zoe exclaimed.
“Deal, easiest money I ever made.” Zack shook his sister’s hand.
“We’re serious, Zack,” Madison said. “They’re on Bunco’s pirate ship!”
“And they’re catching up quick,” said Zoe.
“Everyone on deck! Everyone on deck!” Ozzie’s voice came over the intercom loudspeaker system. Zack jumped out of his seat and raced out of the cabin.
Zack, Rice, Madison, Olivia, and Zoe stood on the ship’s highest deck, looking out over the port rail. Rice peered through a pair of binoculars. “It’s them all right,” he confirmed.
“Let me see that,” said Zack, grabbing the binoculars away from his friend.
In the distance a large ship with a skull-and-crossbones flag sailed toward them. He could make out the pale, apelike figures of the super zombies scurrying to and fro along the deck. Cousin Ben, Olivia’s super zombie brother, was commanding the vessel.
“What the—” Zack murmured, and let the binoculars dangle around his neck.
“Told ya so, little bro,” Zoe said. “You owe me fifty bucks.”
Zack’s heart sank at the sight of Bunco’s pirate ship. “Put it on my tab,” he said.
Ozzie leaned out the pilothouse window, whipped out his binoculars, and surveyed the super zombie pirate ship. “Oh, snap! That’s messed up.” He turned to Zack. “Looks like Cousin Ben’s running the show.”
“Come on, Ozzie,” Zoe whined as the cruise ship plowed its bulk at a slow clip through the high seas. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“Not really,” Ozzie told her. “This thing isn’t exactly built for speed.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Madison said.
“They may be faster than us,” Zoe said. “But we’re bigger than them.”
“Everybody, quick!” Zack shouted. “Grab everything you can and bring it over to this side. If they’re going to try and board our ship, we’re not going to make it easy on them.”
As the super zombie pirate ship sailed toward their slow-moving megaship, the kids gathered up bowling balls, golf clubs, deck chairs, and anything else they could get their hands on.
Zack looked through the binoculars again and trained the lens on the front of the enemy ship. The super zombies were loading a cannon on the top deck and aiming it straight at them.
“Uh-oh!” Zack said, and turned to his friends with a shocked look on his face. “Rice, do the cannons on Bunco’s pirate ship actually work?”
“Yeah,” Rice said. “Like I told you, Bunco restored the ship to its original working condition. Why?”
BOOM! The cannon cracked in the distance.
“Duck!” Zack shouted. The cannonball sailed through the air and came crashing down. The wooden deck erupted in splinters as the cannonball pierced the upper level.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Three more shots rang out.
“Hit the deck!” Ozzie shouted. The kids all ducked for cover.
“What are we going to do?” Olivia shrieked.
The kids huddled together as one of the cannonballs flew through the café and spa beneath the control room. The two other shots of cannon fire drilled two jagged holes into the side of the cruise ship.
Rice peeked over the railing and yelled, “They’re gonna hit us!”
Bunco’s pirate ship of the undead swept up swiftly alongside the starboard flank of the Fun World megacruiser. The kids all braced themselves as the super-zombified clipper sideswiped their ship with a sturdy clank.
A split second later, one of the super zombies bounded off the pirate ship and grabbed on to the white-painted ladder at the hull of Bunco’s cruise ship. In its hand it held one end of a rope ladder that stretched all the way across to the pirate ship. The kids watched in horror as the super zombie boarding their ship tied the rope
ladder to the rungs, tethering the pirate ship to the megacruiser.
Ozzie took off like a shot back to the control room.
“Where are you going?” Zack shouted. “We need you!”
“I’ll be back,” he called out as he ran away. “I have to change our direction!”
“They’re climbing!” Olivia yelled over the sea breeze.
“Zack!” Rice shouted. “Get ready!”
While the super zombie pirates clung to the rungs of the ladders, Zack ran to the cruise ship café and found the cannonball in a pile of rubble by the counter. He picked up the cannonball and lugged it back to the ship’s railing. He lined it up with the super zombie below and let it fall. WHAMMO! A direct hit sent the super zombie flailing off the ladder and splashing in the wake of the megaship’s turbine propellers.
“Good aim, little bro,” Zoe said. “Watch this!”
As she lifted a bocce ball over her head, the cruise ship jerked. Zoe squealed and dropped the ball away from the super zombies. “Hey! What the heck!” she yelled.
Ozzie steered away from the zombified pirate ship. The ropes tightened between the two vessels as the Fun World changed direction.
Some of the super zombies were flung off into the ocean while others continued to climb the ladders of the cruise ship. More and more used the taut rope lines like monkey bars and grappled their way across.
Some of them were wearing eye patches. Others wore black vests with gold trim and pirate hats. Their costumes were fitted with fancy-looking scabbards, and they were brandishing replica swords as they howled and grunted what sounded like an old sea shanty.
From the pirate ship, Cousin Ben commanded the ambush. He wore a frilly white puffy shirt and an eye patch over his right eye. Zack caught Cousin Ben’s gaze and stared into his left eye. There was a flicker of intellect in the cold, blank glare looking back at him.
Cousin Ben pointed up at Olivia and bared his teeth, and then he growled. His super zombie minions peered up at Madison’s Canadian cousin and locked eyes with their prey.
“Are they coming after me?” Olivia asked, her voice cracking a little.
“Don’t worry, Olivia,” Zack said. “We’ll protect you. Right, guys?”
“Yeah!”
“Don’t worry, girl,” said Zoe. “We gotchoo.”
“Olivia, maybe you should go to the captain’s control room and stay there until the coast is clear!” Rice shouted.
“No way!” Olivia sounded angry. “I can fight zombies just as well as anyone here!”
“Olivia, please,” Zack said. “You’re the last antidote. We can’t afford to lose you.”
“We can’t afford to lose this battle either,” she said.
“She’s right,” Ozzie called down from the pilothouse. “We need all hands on deck if we’re going to make it out of this!”
“Yeah, dorkbrains, let her fight,” Zoe said. “She could probably take both of you with one hand tied behind her back.”
“Blarghphle-gloggle!” One of the super zombies breached the ledge and reared its ugly head over the railing.
Patches of its pale, sallow skin were beginning to turn bright pink from the beating sun. Its eyes were dark and sunken as if a day-old cadaver had just woken from a stay at the morgue.
“Hi-ya!” Madison lunged forward, wielding one of the shuffleboard shooters. She drilled the super zombie freak in its larynx with the V-shaped crux of the stick.
“Schlarf!” The super zombie squawked and reeled back, falling off the railing and down into the water below.
The uber undead ransackers continued to scrabble up the ladders while the kids threw all manner of debris: deck chairs, bocce balls, full cans of soda from the snack bar.
The kids picked off their undead targets, but the super zombie pirates just kept coming, shimmying across the tightened ropes between the two vessels and climbing up the ladders of the cruise ship.
Zack stared down the hull of the ship as Ozzie continued to navigate away from the pirate ship. Both ladders running up the sides were filled with super zombies.
“You guys, we’re running out of stuff to throw!” Zack shouted. “What are we gonna do?”
“Out of the way, little bro,” Zoe came sprinting from the upper deck’s supply room with Madison. They were each carrying an armful of bottles of suntan lotion.
Madison stopped in front of the first ladder. Zoe stood looking down the top of the second. The two of them began to squeeze out the bottles of lotion and tanning oil, drizzling the slippery substance all over the top rungs of the ladders. The oily moisturizer dripped down from rung to rung, and the super zombies began to lose their grips and fall off, knocking one another down until there were none left.
“Yeah!” Zack shouted. “Woo-hoo!” He jumped in the air and pumped his fist.
WHOOSH! Suddenly, a fast-moving shadow passed over their heads and a loud double thump sounded on the deck. Olivia’s super undead brother had landed on the cruise ship’s upper deck like a swashbuckling buccaneer. They all whirled around as Cousin Ben dismounted from a length of rope tied to the mast of the pirate ship. The super zombie ringleader wrapped Olivia up with both arms.
“Get off me, Ben!” Olivia cried, trying to wriggle free from the clutches of her super-zombified older brother. “Seriously, I mean it. You’re hurting me!”
“Let her go, man!” Zack yelled at the super zombie.
Cousin Ben snarled ferociously at Zack and bounded toward the railing.
“Hold it right there, el freako!” Zoe shouted. “Not another step.”
Cousin Ben cackled at her as if he were amused by the threat.
“Oh, you think that’s funny?” Zoe clenched her jaw and her eyes sparked with bitter fury. She gripped the handle of a badminton racket and shook it at Cousin Ben.
BOOM! The cannon exploded—only this time it wasn’t a cannonball.
“Duck!” Madison shouted, and dropped to the ground.
One of the super zombies flew through the air, somersaulting and then slamming on the deck of the cruise ship with a bone-crunching crash.
The super zombie jumped to its feet and lunged toward Zoe. She swatted the undead mutant with her badminton racket. The super zombie caught the racket and ripped it out of her hand, then broke the frame clean in half.
Ozzie and Rice ran over to help Zoe with the undead super freak.
“Hey!” yelled Rice. “Pick on someone your own size!”
The super zombie growled and lunged at Rice.
“I didn’t mean me!” Rice retreated from the super zombie attack and let out a high-pitched squeal.
“Let her go!” Zack continued to shout at Cousin Ben to release Olivia.
ZWOOSH! Across the way on the pirate ship, one of Cousin Ben’s super zombie minions sent another rope from the mast to his undead master and commander. Cousin Ben caught the rope with one arm, holding Olivia with the other one. She squirmed, trying to elbow her older super zombie brother in the ribs, but Cousin Ben felt no pain and only tightened his grasp.
Zack sprinted full steam toward Cousin Ben, who mounted the rail, ready to make off with Olivia.
“Zack!” Olivia shouted.
Just as Cousin Ben jumped, Olivia managed to wriggle her arm free. She reached out to Zack. Zack stretched his arm out, too, and caught her firmly by the wrist. He held strong as Cousin Ben swung down. Zack had the upper hand, and Olivia, still covered in suntan lotion, slipped free from her brother’s clutches.
Cousin Ben’s eyes went wild with anger, and he reached back for Olivia, losing his grip on the swinging rope. The super zombie flailed and fell down to the waters below.
Zack’s midsection smashed into the metal railing. His stomach bruised as Olivia thunked against the hull. She dangled over the side of the ship, clinging to Zack’s hand and shrieking at the top of her lungs.
Zack felt his grasp slipping and clutched tighter.
“Zack!” she screamed, the ocean roiling below them. “Don’
t let go!”
Zack reached over with his other arm. He grabbed her wrist with two hands now, which nearly flipped him over the rail and sent them both down into the super zombie–infested waters. Olivia kicked her legs, trying to get a foothold on the side of the ship, but she continued to flail.
“Help!” Zack shouted. “Someone help me! She’s slipping!”
Rice raced over behind his friend. “I’m here, buddy!” He grabbed Zack around his waist. “On the count of three, we give her the old heave-ho. Hang on, Olivia!”
“One, two!” Zack shouted. “Three!” He yanked upward with all his strength and started to pull her up. She lifted her foot onto the railing and fell on top of Zack, who fell backward onto Rice. The three of them tumbled back onto the deck with a thunk.
“Phew,” she said, brushing her hair out of her face and getting off of Zack. “Thanks, guys. That was a close one, eh?”
“Cut the ropes!” Rice shouted. “Cut the ropes!”
Zack followed his friend’s gaze and looked down the side of the cruise ship where the ropes from the pirate ship were lashed to the ladders.
Ozzie was climbing deftly down one of the lotion-slick ladders with his military-issue survival knife.
PHFFT! Ozzie sliced the rope clean through, and the super zombies were flung off, dropping into the ocean deep. PHFFT! Ozzie clipped the second rope line before the other super zombie buccaneers could climb across. The gaggle of super zombie pirates went flying into the sea on the rope’s violent whiplash.
Finally they were detached and drifting away from Bunco’s pirate ship.
“Let’s just make sure none of those super zombies managed to get on board,” Ozzie said. “Then get the heck out of here.”
Zombies of the Caribbean Page 3
