The Zombie Chasers #5

by John Kloepfer

  “Back up, everybody!” Zack yelled. “Bunco’s about to bite the big one!”

  “Urgh!” Bunco let out a loud groan and grabbed his belly as if he was having an intense and sudden stomach cramp. Then he moaned even louder and collapsed down on his one good knee.

  As Bunco writhed on the floor in the throes of his pre-rezombification, Ozzie Briggs awoke from his zombie slumber in the living room and shot off the floor completely zombified.

  “Blargh!” he roared, coming into Bunco’s office. Zack and Rice tackled zombie Ozzie to the ground and quickly gave him a dose of ginkgo. Olivia pulled over a rolling office chair and the boys sat him up as he fell into a ginkgo zombie stupor.

  Behind them, the door burst open and the zombies who had been pushing and clawing at the doors barreled through.

  Zack rolled Ozzie away from the undead swarm over to the girls now waiting by Bunco’s private monorail access. Bunco was rolling around on the floor convulsing in thick puddles of drool. Rice rushed for Bunco, but Zack pulled him back. “Bunco!” Rice cried, trying to shake loose, but it was no use.

  “It’s too late for him now!” Zack yelled over the shriek and groan of the zombie penthouse trashers. “We gotta get outta here, man!”

  They dashed through Bunco’s secret passageway leading to the Fun World monorail and caught up with the girls.

  “Guys, we need a code for this thing,” said Madison, referring to the keypad-activated lock leading to the monorail.

  Zack raced back to the study doorway. The stinking mass of decomposing bodies had filled up the suite to maximum capacity. “Bunco!” he shouted to the old gumball guru. “We need the code! What’s the code?”

  Bunco’s rezombifying head turned, gazing at Zack. The life was rushing from his face and his eyes had a far-off look, but there seemed to be a tiny spark left. “Gumballs,” Bunco said deliriously, and then passed out.

  The zombies funneled through the study doorway, gargling phlegm and flailing their arms, thrashing across the floor.

  “What did he say?” asked Zoe.

  “All he said was ‘gumballs,’” Zack said, bewildered.

  “Well, there’s only numbers,” Zoe said, gesturing toward the keypad.

  “Maybe do it like a telephone,” Madison said. “48622557.”

  Zoe punched in the code, and the passageway opened to a platform for the Fun World monorail system.

  “OMG,” Zoe said to her BFF. “That was, like, so smart of you.”

  “Thanks. I thought so, too,” said Madison as they all boarded the waiting monorail car, dragging zombie Ozzie in his whirly chair behind them.

  “Next stop: visitor parking,” a digitized voice recording announced over the loudspeaker, and the monorail took off into the warm Florida night.

  The Fun World monorail zipped off toward the parking lot, high above the zombie mayhem on the ground below.

  Rice was pouting in the backseat. “I can’t believe we lost Bunco. I had so many questions I wanted to ask him.”

  “Look on the bright side,” said Zack. “At least he gave us instructions. And we’ve got Olivia. And Bunco knew who we were.”

  “Well,” said Rice, “he knew who I was.”

  “Whatever,” said Zack.

  “He’s not gone forever,” Madison consoled Rice.

  “You guys are right,” said Rice, perking up a little. “Cuz we’re going to fix the antidote. Then we can unzombify him, and I can ask him anything I want.”

  The sleek aboveground train glided along the track, buzzing with electromagnetic propulsion. Zack pulled out Ozzie’s binoculars and peered at Fun World below them. A gigantic zombie swarm was pouring out of the gates and surging into the parking lot. Super zombies Uncle Conrad, Aunt Ginny, and Cousin Ben were all now driving the go-karts, herding their seemingly endless supply of zombie minions.

  “Whoa,” Zack said. “They’re still following us!”

  A minute later, the monorail ride came to a smooth stop, and the kids hurried onto the platform. Zack pushed zombie Ozzie in the whirly chair as fast as he could. CLACK! The front wheel of the desk chair hit a bump in the ground and zombie Ozzie went flying onto the platform floor. Rice, Madison, Zoe, and Olivia were already taking an abandoned escalator to the ground, so Zack picked Ozzie up off the ground and tossed him back into his seat. “There you go, buddy!” Zack grunted and then raced them down into the Fun World parking lot.

  The super zombies led their gigantic swarm of Fun World zombies through the rows of vehicles, trudging in the humidity, their faces pocked and spackled with necrotic decay.

  The kids all ducked down as the go-karts zipped through the rows of parked cars. Once they’d passed, Zack and the gang stood behind Olivia as she scratched her head, looking for her parent’s rental Jeep. “I thought they’d parked it right over there, but now I don’t see it.”

  “Dude,” Rice cried out to Zack. “Behind you!”

  Zack spotted the blur of aggressive zombie movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around.

  The undead beast swiped at him with its bony claws, but Zack ducked and hopped to the side as the zombie bent down sinisterly to thrash him with its disgusting septic fingernails. Zack swung his bat and clubbed the rezombified mutant on the back of the head and the thing dropped to the ground in a motionless heap.

  “I see it!” Olivia called out, pointing toward the Jeep.

  Zoe took off running, dodging zombies sprawled on car rooftops, and reached the Jeep first.

  “Here,” Olivia said, catching up and tossing Zoe the keys. Zoe jumped in the driver’s seat and Olivia hopped in the passenger’s side. Zack, Rice, and Madison loaded Ozzie into the storage compartment of the Jeep and then piled in the back.

  Zoe turned the ignition key and the engine hummed to life. She hit the gas and the back wheels spun and kicked up dust behind them as they sped through the zombified parking lot.

  “Okay, Zoe,” Olivia said, looking at her phone as they drove down the highway. “I think you want to make a left just up ahead.”

  Zack looked out the back window as they cruised off toward the bubble gum factory. In the distance, the go-kart-driving super zombies herded their undead rebellion after them in a slow but steady pursuit.

  Speeding toward the bubble gum factory, Zack slumped back in his seat and watched the palm trees whizz by one by one. The warm breeze cooled the sweat on his face, and it felt good not to worry, if only for a second, about some zombie freak trying to bite him.

  “Ugh!” Rice clutched his stomach in the backseat.

  Zack looked at his pal, who grimaced back. “You okay, man?” he asked.

  “I think I’m okay.” Rice belched. “No thanks to Zoe making me swallow that bubble gum. That . . . or the Funyuns. It could have definitely been all the Funyuns.” He groaned. “The bubble gum plus the Funyuns.” Rice’s stomach grumbled audibly.

  A short while later, they pulled off the boulevard and coasted up the driveway to Bunco Inc. Streaks of slime crisscrossed the blacktop and the sidewalk in front of the building. The air was a fetid mix of septic stink and rainbow fruit flavors. Twin smokestacks churned out two clouds of the sweet-smelling exhaust, which wafted through the undead Florida fog like cheap air freshener in a public restroom.

  “This is it,” Zoe said, slowing the Jeep to a stop. “We’re here.”

  Zack and the gang hopped out and strolled up to the main entrance. Rice rolled zombie Ozzie up the handicap ramp in the chair from Bunco’s office. On the sidewalk, two abandoned cars were T-boned in front of the entrance, and two trails of zombie slime were coming from each driver’s seat.

  As they pushed inside, the facility was silent but for the clanking, ambient sound of industrial machinery reverberating throughout the whole place.

  They made their way down the hallway, and just as they turned the corner, two zombified factory workers wearing bright yellow overalls and protective eyewear lunged out from the adjacent corridor.

  “Gl
arph!” The zombies gargled on their half-swallowed tongues. They were both big and oafish, and the collars of their white Bunco Inc. T-shirts were covered in green-black filth.

  Zoe leaped in the air and jump-kicked an undead lummox right in the buttocks.

  “Hi-ya!” she yelled as she delivered the blow. The zombie’s whole hip gave way and he collapsed to the side.

  “Ahhhhh!” Olivia shrieked as the second zombie brute grabbed her tightly by the hair. She reached above her head and grabbed the undead hair-puller by the wrist with both hands, then twisted around and pried the factory-worker zombie’s fingers off her hair. “Back up!” she yelled at the zombie and then landed two power punches to its midsection. The beast wheezed out a batch of hot, stinking breath and crumpled to the ground from the body blow.

  Suddenly, zombie Ozzie woke up from his ginkgo nap and lurched out of his rolling chair, going straight for Rice.

  “Rargh!” Ozzie clenched his two zombified hands around Rice’s throat, nearly strangling him.

  “Dude,” Rice squawked, “I’m sorry I lost your nunchaku.”

  “Nunchargha!” Ozzie bellowed, about to chomp right into Rice’s skull.

  “No!” Zack cried as his zombie buddy went in for the bite. Zack whacked Ozzie in the side of the head with the baseball bat just hard enough, and zombie Ozzie dropped to the cold, hard floor with a clunk.

  “Sorry, Oz,” said Zack, backing away from his unconscious zombie friend.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Rice. “He’ll be fine; he’s a zombie.”

  At the other end of the hallway, a pack of factory-worker zombies turned the corner and came waddling toward the kids.

  “Come on, dorkbrains,” said Zoe. “We gotta find out where to make the gumballs!”

  They plopped zombie Ozzie’s conked-out body back in the whirly chair and sprinted down a connecting hallway that had a sign that read: GUMBALL PRODUCTION . In the middle of the hall, Zack leaned on the door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS ONLY, opening it slightly. A stream of slime slithered down the door, and a surge of round, white eyeballs with squiggly red veins and blue-black pupils rolled out at his feet.

  “Yuck!” Madison squealed. “Eyeballs!”

  “They’re not eyeballs,” said Rice, picking one up. “They’re gumballs!”

  As the mass of candy eyeballs spread out around them, two zombie swarms appeared, one at each end of the hallway.

  “Ew, Twinkles,” said Madison as her pup picked up an eyeball gumball in his mouth. “Drop it!” But Twinkles wouldn’t listen and started to chew the gumball. Madison raced over to him and bent down, but Twinkles backed up with a little growl. Madison grabbed him and stuck her fingers in his mouth, pulling out the chewable eyeball. “OMG,” she said, holding the slimy orb in between her fingers. “It’s a real one!” She squealed and threw the actual eyeball down the hallway. “Bad Twinkles!”

  Zack leaned his shoulder against the door again, but he could push it open only a few more inches. He squinted one eye and peeked inside the production facility. The machines were going full throttle, churning out the eyeball gumballs, which had accumulated about three feet high off the ground.

  “Well,” said Rice, peeking over Zack’s shoulder, “at least we know the equipment’s working. . . .”

  “Quick,” Zack said. “Help me shovel some of these things out.” He bent down and stuck his arm into the room, scooping out the gumball overflow from the production floor.

  The girls kicked heaps of the eyeball gumballs down each end of the corridor.

  As the gumballs rolled down the hall and hit the zombies’ feet, the front lines of undead factory workers started to slip and topple on their dislocated knees and ankles.

  “Okay, Come on!” Zack shouted.

  The five of them shimmied inside the production facility, dragging zombie Ozzie behind them.

  Once inside, Zack could see what was going on. Though all the bubble gum factory employees had rezombified, the factory had been automatically churning out eyeball gumballs for the past forty-eight hours. In front of him, Rice, Zoe, Madison, and Olivia waded through the waist-high pile of gumballs like they were in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.

  Giant stainless steel tanks towered above the eyeball-covered ground, and silver chutes slanted at all angles out of the heavy-duty bubble gum mixers. The metallic machinery glimmered in the moonlight that shone through twin-arched windows looking out over the Florida coast.

  “Okay, guys,” Zack said, kicking a few hundred more gumballs out into the hallway so he could close the door. “We need to zombie-proof ourselves in here until we can mass-produce the antidote.”

  “But first we need to shut down production on eyeball gumballs and get some of these brain-flavored gumballs cooking,” Rice said.

  “Hey, look over here,” Madison said, getting everyone’s attention. “There’s some kind of control room over there.”

  “Cool,” said Zack. “What are we waiting for?”

  They all treaded through the gumball ball pit and gathered inside the control room. It reminded Zack of the BurgerDog factory at the end of the first outbreak. Like the zombie nightmare was almost over.

  “Step one.” Rice hit the reset button on the control panel and the gumball production line slowed to a stop. “Step two,” Rice said as he adjusted the settings to produce a batch of popcorn/brain-flavored gumballs. “Now all we have to do is add in the antidote when we start the mixer and voilà—”

  “Dude, what are you doing?” Zack asked. “How do you know all this?”

  “When I wrote my paper on Bunco, Mrs. Gordon only gave me a C plus,” Rice said, flicking a couple more switches. “So for extra credit, I wrote her another paper on Bunco’s bubble gum–making process. And on that, my friend, I got an A minus.”

  Rice looked at the computer monitor and checked the preset ingredients then went back out to the factory floor. They followed Rice over to the mixer and watched him add a few dashes of Olivia’s antidote serum. “Now we’re ready,” said Rice as he pulled back the start lever and the gears began to crank once again.

  “Nice work, bro,” Zack said, high-fiving his boy.

  “Just trying to make up for the whole super zombie thing,” he said.

  Nearby, zombie howls could be heard over the noise of the automatic machinery churning out the batch of antidote gumballs.

  They rushed to the high arching windows and peered out onto the factory grounds. A mind-boggling mass of Fun World zombies was converging on the gumball factory.

  “There’s so many of them,” Olivia remarked as they watched more and more Floridian freakazoids join the Fun World crowd from the surrounding area.

  “Why are they all coming here?” asked Zoe.

  “They’re attracted to the smell,” said Zack. He was referring to the factory smokestacks emitting the hybrid scent of brains and popcorn into the air outside.

  As the doomsday zombie swarm reached Bunco’s production facility, they laid siege to the bubble gum factory, crashing through the gates.

  “Hurry up, guys. We need to make sure the gumball antidote works!” Rice shouted to Zack as the first of the antidote gumballs was ready. “Test it out on Ozzie.”

  Zack stuffed one of the gray gumballs into Ozzie’s unconscious zombie mouth and watched it slide down his throat in a single involuntary gulp.

  In an instant, Ozzie’s eyes popped open and he jumped to his feet.

  “Back up!” Zack shouted to the rest of them, and they all edged away from the unzombifying martial arts master. “Give him some room.”

  Ozzie began to spin and cried out one last zombie howl while kicking and jabbing at anything in his general vicinity.

  A moment later, Ozzie collapsed in the pit of eyeball gumballs on the ground, still writhing around wildly like a zombie.

  “Uh, Rice,” Zack said. “Is that what he’s supposed to be doing?”

  “Just give it a sec, bro,” Rice responded. “I got this one.”

>   Zack turned his attention back to zombie Ozzie and watched him open his eyes. He gazed down at Ozzie’s face, checking to see if he was all right.

  “Yo.” Ozzie yawned loudly, shaking off his undead grogginess. “What’s up?”

  They all cheered and lifted their unzombified buddy off the ground. But there was no time to celebrate. The zombies were here.

  WHAM! BOOM! Furious blow after furious blow from the Floridian zombies shook the fire escape door on the factory floor. The door flung open and Olivia’s super zombie brother burst inside. Cousin Ben scampered nimbly down the wrought iron ladder and hopped onto the eyeball-gumball-covered production floor with a grunt.

  Then the main door leading to the factory thumped and pounded with the force of a thousand undead fists. POW! The hallway door blasted open and super zombie Aunt Ginny plowed inside, too.

  BANG! CRACK!

  One of the twin arched windows shattered and a shower of glass shards crashed to the floor. Zack swiveled his head to the noise as super zombie Uncle Conrad appeared in the window frame. At the base of the window, Zack could see a roiling mass of zombified arms, legs, and heads writhing beneath the super zombie’s feet. Outside the factory, the Fun World zombies had been piled on top of one another until they’d formed a humongous staircase of the rotting undead. Standing atop his massive heap of rezombified minions, Uncle Conrad glared down into the gumball factory.

  Uncle Conrad stepped off his undead escalator and jumped down onto the catwalk below the window, then bounded into the pit of gumballs to join his wife and son.

  “They look pretty hungry,” Rice said.

  Zack carried over a bucket of the antidote gumballs while Rice produced two Fun World slingshots from his backpack. “Brain-flavored, antidote-infused gumballs with a slight popcorn glaze.”

  Madison and Twinkles stood guard in front of Olivia while Ozzie and Zoe each clutched an antidote gumball in one hand and moved forward to try to get within range of the super zombies.

  Zack and Rice started firing off rounds of the antidote gumballs with their Fun World slingshots, just missing the super zombies’ mouths and smacking them in their heads.