by MJ Ware
Chapter 9 – When Life Gives You Lemons, Kill Zombies
Misty wrinkled her forehead, looked down at the boot, then back at me and frowned. Seeing the condition I was in, she somehow managed to keep from interrogating me.
"I'm going to wash up," she said as she marched away, shaking her head.
My jeans were a mess. Covered in dirt, blood, even a little zombie snot. I tried finding a pair of Walmart-brand jeans that fit and promised myself not to do anything that stupid again. This wasn't a game; my little footwear fiasco had almost cost my life and possibly Misty's, too.
Neither of us said much as we wolfed down a nutritious lunch of beef jerky and cookie dough. When we were ready to start testing out the zombie juice, my heart still hadn't stopped pounding.
We went up and down every aisle. Getting pH test strips, cola, drink mixes, anything we thought might work. I also grabbed some water balloons and a small pump.
We loaded all our stuff into plastic bins and used a rope to pull it up the ladder to the roof. Coated with thick, off-white rubber, checkered with large vents, it looked way bigger up here.
"Let's try one solution per gun. So we don't get mixed up," she said as I untied a bin full of Super Soakers.
"Sounds good. What should we try first?"
"Straight lemon juice. If my theory is correct, it should work best." Misty pulled out a bag full of those fake plastic lemons filled with pure juice.
"These shouldn't clog up the gun: no pulp. Here's a funnel," I said.
With a knife, I cut off the tops of the fake lemons so we could easily fill the Super Soakers. I pumped up the gun as we walked to the edge of the roof. What I saw almost made me pee my pants.
It'd been no more than a couple of hours since we moved the Mustang, but now the town looked alive—every sidewalk, every corner, every street: zombies. There were dozens.
"Shouldn't have much trouble finding a target."
"How about that one?" Misty pointed to a zombie standing behind a bus bench. "It could almost be waiting for a ride."
"Okay, here it goes." I shot the zombie right in the side of the head, trying to get some on its face.
I killed it, all right, just not how I expected. Its head burst into flames and then went out just as quickly, leaving behind a smoking corpse.
"Behold, the awesome power of the zombie juice Super Soaker!" I waved the gun above my head in triumph.
"Wow," Misty said, looking around as if she were trying not to feel embarrassed for me. "I think we better tone it down next time. The juice, I mean."
"The trick will be finding the right mix," I said, quickly putting the gun down.
Like mad scientists, we experimented with citrus, soda, juices and drink mixes. Watered-downed citrus worked best: two parts water to one part juice. Double strength Kool-aid took down zombies pretty good, too. Plus, it had the added advantage of giving you an excuse to yell, "Oh yeah!"
Using the pump and a bucket of lemon juice, I made some water balloon juice bombs; they worked, as long as you hit the zombie around the face.
We made a massive mess outside of Walmart. The place looked like an abandoned battlefield. It was a great way to blow off steam, but we needed to finish our preparations inside.
"I'm sorta worried about the front door," I said.
"We've got it locked, plus the security gate's in place."
"Yeah, I'm sure that can stop ten or twenty of them. What about a hundred or a thousand?"
Misty looked over the parking lot as if she were waiting for an army of the undead to come marching out. "You think there could really be that many?"
"Hope not, but we've gotta be prepared. We should have got some wood to put over the windows."
It's too late now."
We headed down to the vision center and started taking down the rest of the glasses and clearing out the displays.
"How about these?" Misty put on a pair of the ugliest old-lady specs I've ever seen.
I just ignored her. "Did you see all those pallets in back? Some of them are really heavy: dog food, microwaves, TVs. We could stack them up in front of the glass doors. That would provide some extra protection."
Misty nodded as she tried to cross her eyes. She looked pretty ridiculous, but I wasn't in much of a laughing mood.
