Then right on cue, Rice’s flashlight browned out and went completely dark.
“Bummer . . . ,” Rice said.
Zack lifted his own hand in front of his face. He couldn’t see a finger, but he sure could hear the undead groans echoing throughout the pitch-black tomb.
The boys stood totally still, blind in the complete darkness.
“Great,” Zack said. “Let’s just make our way back and check in with Ozzie and Madison. They should have found Twinkles by now. . . .”
“Yeah,” said Rice. “And hopefully the mayfly jar, too.”
Reversing through the pitch-dark corridor, the boys retraced their path. Zack led the way with Rice close behind him. The two boys pawed at the walls to guide them through the blackness, taking baby steps. As they neared the intersection of the two corridors Zack and Rice paused.
“Ozzie?” Zack called out into the darkness. “Madison?”
“Shhhh,” Rice said. “Quit making noise. We don’t want to attract any zombies down here.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” Zack asked. “Just stand here and wait?”
“Hold it,” Rice said. “I just remembered I might have a couple of batteries at the bottom of my backpack.”
Zack rolled his eyes. “You just remembered that?”
“Yeah, man, better late than never, right?” Rice said, leaning against the wall while rummaging around in his bag. “And, dude, there’s no need to roll your eyes at—”
“How did you know—” Zack started to say when a strange and unexpected noise interrupted him. It sounded like two stone slabs grinding on top of each other. The wall started to move next to him, like a revolving door. And then it stopped as suddenly as it had started.
“Rice, what was that?” Zack asked, but there was no response. “Rice!” he shouted one more time, worried for his best friend. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I can hear you, but you sound like you’re really far away!” Rice’s voice called through the wall. “These walls must be pretty thick. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, sort of,” Zack said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” said Rice. “I must have hit a trick door or something super cool like that. Not sure, it’s too dark. . . . Hold on. . . . I just found my extra batteries. Phew!”
“You have your flashlight back on?” Zack said. “See if you can activate the door again.”
After a moment Rice called back through the wall. “No go, man. I think it’s a one-way door. Feel around on the wall and see if you can flip me back around. Otherwise I’m going to have to find my way back to you from some other route!”
Zack took both hands and groped the wall, feeling for some kind of hidden button or an ancient sconce to pull down like in the movies. But all he felt was the smooth cool surface of stone.
“I can’t find it, dude,” Zack said, starting to feel panic churn in his belly. “But be careful! I’m going to look for Madison and Ozzie and come get you.”
“Watch out for the zummies!” Rice called back, his voice becoming faint in the secret passageway.
All alone now, Zack moved blindly through the corridor, hoping that he was going in the same direction as Ozzie and Madison. He turned a corner, feeling his way with his hands, when a loud growl startled him.
“Twinkles?” Zack said, and tripped backward.
BAM! He landed hard on his butt and hit the back of his head on the floor.
He heard the undead growl again. It definitely wasn’t Twinkles.
“ACK!” Zack cried, rubbing the back of his skull. A thin, bony hand reached down, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and lifted him off the ground.
He ripped his head away, losing a tuft of hair in the process. His scalp stung and throbbed, but it was worth it to get free from the zombie. Zack dropped to the ground and crawled through a doorway. He immediately sensed the musty breath of rezombified archaeologists and zumbified mummies. He was surrounded.
Zack couldn’t see how many zombies were in the room with him, but he had a feeling it was a whole freakin’ lot. A three-fingered claw clamped down on his shoulder and grabbed him from behind. Zack wheeled around and swung blindly at where he thought its head was.
WHAM! His elbow hit its face with a dry crunch. Zack cringed as the crook of his arm got stuck in the zombie’s mouth. The corpse’s dried-up lip skin crumbled around his elbow joint. He pulled his arm back and his elbow came free from the ancient pharaoh’s withered mouth.
Zack felt the bony hand let go of his shoulder and heard the zummy drop to the ground. One down, too many to go.
Zack tried to run but fell to his knees as two hands grabbed his legs. The hands dragged him away from the door and Zack began to panic. How were you supposed to fight a bunch of zombies when you couldn’t see where they were coming from?
“Help!” Zack screamed into the black void. “Ozzie! Rice! Madison!” His voice echoed through the tomb. The hands were strong, recently human. He made an educated guess: maybe they belonged to one of the archaeologists.
“Somebody please help me!” Zack cried as the zombie pulled him deeper into the room. Zack reached out, feeling around for something to grab on to. His left hand landed on some kind of stick. Only it wasn’t a stick but the shinbone of a zummy. His right hand wrapped around the fleshy ankle of a regular zombie. Zack could feel the clammy skin and the man’s coarse leg hair, which was matted with slime.
The zombie kept pulling at his feet, but Zack bent his knees forward and kicked back as hard as he could, bucking off one of the hands. With a little bit of wiggle room, he kicked even harder a second time. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. The kick landed squarely, and Zack heard an explosion of skin and ancient joints. The sound of bones hitting the floor sent an echo of creepy musical notes throughout the tomb, like the clinking of a wind chime.
His legs were free now, and he tried to stand up, but he felt a dozen arms and hands dangling over him, their slime-slathered fingers tickling his face. Zack flattened himself against the stone floor and ducked under the zombie arms above him. His ears and cheeks were covered in slime. It was like going through a zombie car wash in a convertible. They waved back and forth, slapping him on the sides of his head. Zack crawled forward and jumped to his feet. He tried to remember where the door was and sprinted in that direction.
SMACK! He bashed into something made of solid rock, but it wasn’t the wall. It felt like some kind of statue. He reached up and ran his fingers over the sculpture, like a blind person feeling someone’s face. It wasn’t a statue, he realized. It was one of those standing coffin things that housed mummies. He couldn’t think of the word for it. Snuffleupagus? No, a sarcophagus.
The undead mob was closing in. Zack could feel their breath sucking up all his oxygen.
With nowhere else to hide, he pushed over the coffin lid and squeezed in, hoping there wasn’t a mummy already inside. Luckily there wasn’t. He shut the lid, sealing himself up. He was safe now, but he was also trapped.
Trying to block out the zombie groans right outside, Zack remembered the time when his old nemesis, Greg Bansal-Jones, had shut him in a locker at school. He wished he could go back to that moment. He’d much rather face a couple of school bullies than a tomb full of zombified mummies.
“HELP!” he yelled, but the snarls of the zummies only grew more intense at the sound of his helpless shout.
Over the subhuman groans, Zack could hear two human voices calling for him. “Zack! Zack! We’re coming!” It sounded like Ozzie and Madison! Zack’s heart leaped and he yelled back. “Guys, I’m in here. In here, guys! Help, quick!”
A sliver of light appeared through a crack in Zack’s coffin. It was the glow of Madison’s smartphone.
“Zack, where are you?” Madison yelled.
“I’m in here,” Zack shouted. “Inside the sarcophagus!”
“Inside the wha—” Ozzie cut himself off. “Holy mackerel, there’s a lot of zombies in here! Are you really trappe
d, Zack?”
“No, Ozzie,” Zack shouted, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I’m just in the middle of my Houdini routine.”
“What happened to Rice?” Ozzie shouted. “Is he with you?”
“I lost him,” Zack replied.
“What do you mean, you lost him?” Madison asked.
“What does it matter?” Zack shouted back, frustrated. “Can you just get me out of here?”
“We’re on it!” Ozzie yelled.
Zack could hear the clatter of broken jaws, the screech of squeaky joints, the crunch of decayed muscles, and the phlegm-rattling wheeze of the undead mob’s rotten breaths.
“It might take a minute,” Ozzie said. “There’s a freak load of zombies in this place.”
“Yeah,” Madison said. “Maybe we should lure some of them out. Better than taking them all on at once.”
Zack listened as his friends started to distract the zombies away from his sarcophagus.
“Come on, you ugly freakazoids,” Madison said in a voice like she was training a new puppy. “This way.”
“That’s right,” Ozzie mimicked. “Be good little brain-munchers.”
“Zack, hang in there!” Madison called back. “We’ll be back for you in a minute.”
Zack could hear the mob leave the room, then Madison and Ozzie unleash their attack. It was like watching a fight scene with your eyes closed. Kablam! Pow! BAM! went the whap of Ozzie’s nunchaku. Madison wah’d and hi-ya’d as she karate chopped. But it sounded like the battle was getting farther away. Zack could barely hear them.
“Hey, guys!” Zack shouted. “Where are you going?” There was still a bunch of zombies outside his sarcophagus, and Zack couldn’t escape. Suddenly, his coffin began to rock from side to side. Zack could hear the dry cackle of the zummy trying to push it over.
Wham! The zummy hit the sarcophagus with all its might.
“Whoa!” Zack yelled as the casket crashed to the floor. The lid shifted off the coffin and Zack squirmed out, but then the heavy top moved again and dropped on his ankle. A searing pain shot up his leg and he was stuck.
The zummies were closing in as Zack tried to twist his foot out of his sneaker, but the top of the sarcophagus weighed way too much.
“ACK!” Zack howled.
A flash of light stunned Zack and he glimpsed the most hideously decomposed zummy of all. It towered over him, its face stuck in some kind of permanent yell. It hissed, flashing its brownish-yellow teeth and stretched out its arms, ready to feast on Zack’s brain.
WHAP! Another beam of light came from the mummy’s head. And just like that, the giant zummy crumpled to the floor.
Zack stared where the mummy zombie had just stood. A shorter, plumper mummy stood over Zack, holding a flashlight. The mummy raised its hand to its face and pulled off its white wrappings.
“’Sup, dude?” Rice said, shining the flashlight up under his chin to make his face look creepy. “Boo!”
“Dude! You scared the crud out of me!” Zack said.
“Sorry, man, but I was just trying to blend in,” Rice replied.
“Get me out of here, wouldja?” Zack asked, grimacing.
Rice bent down, lifting the lid of the sarcophagus. Zack freed his ankle and groaned a sigh of relief. He rolled his ankle around. There’d definitely be a bruise, but at least it wasn’t broken. He looked up at Rice. “Where’d you come from?”
“I found my way back. Walked right through the zombies. Had to dodge Ozzie’s nunchaku, though. There’s a bunch of secret passageways in this joint,” Rice told him enthusiastically. “Super cool, right?”
“So you’ve just been walking around, taking a tour of this place while I’ve been stuck in this coffin about to get eaten by zombies?”
“Well, first I had to wrap myself in toilet paper to blend in with the rest of the mummies. I always keep an extra roll in my bag”—Rice winked—“for emergencies.”
“Seriously?” Zack shook his head as he rose to his feet.
“I was looking for the larvae jar, too,” Rice said defensively. “And I just saved your butt. You owe me.”
“Let’s go help Madison and Ozzie. They were trying to save me before you showed up—my hero,” Zack said sarcastically.
Zack and Rice hurried into the hallway, where half a dozen zombies were still on the attack. Ozzie and Madison were out of breath. It looked like they were having trouble.
“You guys finally decide we deserve a little help?” Madison panted.
Zack spotted a pickax and a shovel leaning against the wall. He ran over and tossed the shovel to Rice, keeping the pickax for himself.
“Hey!” Rice said, making a face. “Why do you get the pickax?”
“Because,” Zack said. He swung the pickax at a zummy behind Ozzie.
“Because isn’t an answer, Zack,” Rice reminded his buddy. He brought the shovel over his head and slammed it down on a zummy’s cranium, watching its old brains puff up in a cloud of dust. “I just don’t understand why you get the big cool pickax and I have the stupid shovel.”
“Fine,” Zack said. “You want the pickax? Is that going to make you happy?”
“Nah,” Rice said. “I’m good with the shovel.”
They finished off the remaining zombies and stood in the silence of the catacombs, catching their breaths.
“Okay, you guys,” Madison said. “We have to find Twinkles. . . .”
“More important,” Ozzie said, “we have to find the mayfly jar and get out of here.”
“How is that more important than Twinkles?” Madison asked.
“Because the fate of the entire world rests on us finding the mayfly sample and getting it to Nigel Black. . . .”
“Well,” she said, “the fate of my world depends on us finding my puppy.”
All of a sudden, Zoe’s voice rang down, “Hey, bozos! What’s taking so long?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Zack shouted back. “Are we not going fast enough for you? While you sit on your butt and wait for us to defeat an entire underground tomb full of zombies?”
“I’m actually not sitting on my butt, I’m standing on my feet,” Zoe said. “But seriously . . . we gotta jet.”
“Awesome!” Ozzie called up to them. “You guys found another jet?”
“No, dummy, you think we just randomly found another plane?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Ozzie said. “You just said you got a jet.”
“I said we have got to jet,” Zoe said, speaking slowly, as if to an infant. “As in, we have to go. Like now.”
“Seriously, guys,” Olivia said. “There’s a whole freakin’ army of zombies heading our way!”
“Yeah, and it’s super hot up here,” Zoe added.
“We can’t go anywhere yet!” Zack shouted back. “We don’t have the mayfly jar.”
“Okay, now you’re all just getting on my nerves,” Zoe bellowed. “Get out of that tomb this instant!”
“Not without the mayfly jar!” Zack shouted.
“And not without Twinkles, either!” Madison yelled.
“You mean you lost Twinkles, too?” Zoe asked in disbelief. “What kind of operation are you guys running down there?”
“We didn’t lose Twinkles,” Ozzie said. “We just haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Well, you’re not going to be seeing anything if we don’t get out of here,” Zoe said. “Because these zombies are going to eat your eyeballs out of your heads.”
“She’s right—we have maybe, like, two minutes to find Twinkles and those mayfly larvae,” Olivia said, “or else we’re going to be mincemeat for these zombie freaks!”
“Come on, you guys,” Zack said, trying to rally the troops. “Let’s do this. . . .”
The four of them walked up and down the dark hallway, scanning the floor for the mayfly container.
“Twinkles!” they called. “Twinkles!”
Just then Twinkles appeared out of the shadows and sprinted to Madison.
“Oh, Twinkles.” Madison bent down to scoop up her pup. “Thank goodness you’re all right!”
“That’s great, Madison,” Rice said. “But we still don’t have the mayfly jar.”
“Umm, yeah, we do,” Madison said. “Twinkles has it in his mouth!”
Zack, Rice, and Ozzie all cheered. “Woo-hoo!”
“Jinx!” Rice shouted, and gave them each a slap on the shoulder.
“Come on, losers!” Zoe shouted. “I don’t plan on getting torn to pieces on account of your super slowness!”
Zack took the special mayfly container from Madison and put it in Rice’s backpack. He was ready to leave these zumbified catacombs behind for good.
Back above ground, things went from bad to worse. Immediately, Zack could see what Zoe and Olivia were worried about—an endless mass of zombies headed straight toward them. There were thousands upon thousands of them. The late afternoon sky was filled with kicked-up dust from the foot-dragging lunatics.
“Where did they all come from?” Zack asked.
“Cairo’s a big city,” Ozzie said. “The whole place must be zombified by now.”
“Which means we’re probably the only human brains in the vicinity,” Rice pointed out.
“So, which way is the airport?” Olivia asked. “We have to get a new plane.”
Ozzie pointed directly at the zombies. “Across the Nile, and all the way on the other side of the city.”
“We need some kind of transportation,” Madison said. “We’re never going to make it on foot.”
Zack glanced around, but knew they’d never find a car in the middle of the desert.
World Zombination Page 5
