The Zombie Chasers #4

by John Kloepfer

  Shortly after the museum opening, the seventh- and eighth-grade classes of Romero Middle School gathered in Central Park for lunch. They all laid out picnic blankets, waiting for the pizza to arrive.

  Madison and Zoe were lying out on their blanket, catching some rays. They had their sleeves rolled up and their sunglasses on. Next to them Zack, Rice, and Ozzie sat on a blanket of their own, people-watching in the shade. All types of folks populated the park: joggers, cyclists, Frisbee throwers, businesspeople, and tourists basked in the fine spring day.

  “Look at all these people . . . ,” said Ozzie as he pointed to a bunch of New Yorkers strolling through the park. “What a freak show!”

  He stared at a man teetering through the park on stilts. Even more bizarre was the stilt walker’s getup—he was dressed like a circus clown, with an orange Afro wig, bright red nose, white face paint, polka-dotted pants, a poofy shirt, and purple suspenders.

  It was strange to see all of these weirdos in broad daylight. Back home in Phoenix, the freaks usually came out only after dark.

  Just then Zack saw Rice’s eyes shift surreptitiously from side to side. “Here we go, boys.” Rice extracted a small black device with a speaker from his backpack. He crawled forward toward Madison and Zoe, reached his hand under their picnic blanket, and planted the gadget there, unnoticed by the sunbathing girls.

  “What the heck was that thing?” Zack and Ozzie both asked at the same time when Rice returned.

  “That, my friends,” said Rice, “is a state-of-the-art, remote-controlled noisemaker.” He held up the tiny remote. “With the click of a button, that little gizmo under there will mimic the sound of any bodily function a human being has to offer. It’s like a whoopee cushion, except way awesomer.”

  “Sick,” Zack said, and looked away, trying to ignore his older sis for fear he might give Rice’s plan away. Over his shoulder he spotted a guy in a red polo shirt and cap walking toward them. He was balancing a dozen pizza boxes on his upturned palms. “Hey, pizza guy’s here!”

  “Okay, everybody line up,” said their Spanish teacher, Mrs. Gonzalez. “Only two slices per person, please!”

  As all the hungry middle schoolers raced to form a line, Madison stood in front of their music and drama teacher, Ms. Merriweather. “Excuse me, Ms. M,” said Madison. “I need another Band-Aid. This one’s getting all grody.” She peeled off her old Band-Aid and tossed it into the trash can.

  “Hold on one second,” Ms. Merriweather said, turning to Madison. “Oh, my gosh.” She slapped her forehead. “Honey, I’m so sorry; I forgot to order you a personal vegan pie.”

  “But,” Madison said, whimpering a little, “I’m, like, totally famished, Ms. M. . . .”

  The delivery guy scratched his head. “I don’t think we have vegan anything.”

  “That’s okay,” Madison said, making a pouty face. “I’ll just pick off the cheese, I guess.”

  After everyone got their pizza, Zack sat back down on the picnic blanket between Ozzie and Rice. He folded his pepperoni slice in half and took a monster bite. The pizza was the best he’d ever tasted, Zack thought, as he polished off the slice.

  “This is the life . . . real New York City pizza,” Rice said, airplaning a stray pepperoni into his mouth.

  Zack glanced over at his sister, who was talking to Madison with her mouth full of pizza crust. They were both giggling as they watched two college-age boys playing catch with a football. Madison grabbed another slice of pizza, peeled the cheese off and started to scarf it down.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Ozzie whisper-yelled. “Let’s try this thing out!”

  Rice pressed one of the remote-control buttons with his thumb, and a series of hideous fart noises erupted from underneath the girls’ blanket. Zoe and Madison both sat up and lifted their sunglasses. “Ew, dude,” Zoe said. “Gross.”

  “Uh-uh.” Madison laughed. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Twinkles?” The girls jinxed each other.

  Twinkles barked defensively. “Arf-arf!”

  Zack and Ozzie covered their mouths, cracking up silently.

  Rice pressed the remote control again and a louder barrage of grotesque bodily sounds reverberated from underneath the girls. Heads began to turn toward Madison and Zoe.

  “What are you freaks looking at?” Zoe yelled at the class. “It’s not us!”

  “Yeah,” Madison said. “Stop looking at us. It’s totally rude!”

  Rice hit the button one more time and another foul-sounding noise erupted, causing the entire class to burst into a fit of laughter. Just then an adult-size silhouette appeared, casting a shadow on Rice’s moment in the sun.

  “Arroz!” Mrs. Gonzalez stood towering over them. “Dámelo. Give it to me.”

  Rice glanced up at their Spanish teacher, gave her his best aw-shucks face, and then passed her the remote control.

  Zoe stood up and walked over. “Thanks, Mrs. G,” she said, handing their chaperone the other half of the mischievous gadget, shaking her head. “Kids today.” Zoe then turned to the boys as their teacher walked away. “I’m glad you three had your little fun.” She scowled. “Because for the rest of this trip you all better sleep with one eye open.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Zoe,” Ozzie said under his breath as Zoe turned away. “We’re real scared.”

  “Okay, everyone!” Ms. Merriweather raised her voice above all their conversations. “Please throw away your plates and form a single-file line over there.” She pointed to the black entry gate leading in and out of the park, where two bright red double-decker tour buses had just pulled up to the curb.

  “I call front seat on the top level!” yelled Zack as he dumped his trash and took off running.

  “Last one there is a rotten zombie!” Rice’s voice trailed off as they hustled for the buses.

  Zack, Rice, and Ozzie peered off the observation deck at the top of the Empire State Building as the sun lowered on the horizon. The sky blazed bright red-orange with streaks of pink clouds. The boys gazed out across the panoramic view of the big city. From the hundred and second floor of the skyscraper, the New Yorkers below looked tinier than ants, more like the size of ticks, hustling and bustling by the thousands upon thousands all over the concrete island of Manhattan.

  “Check it out,” Ozzie said, pointing south toward Liberty Island. “That’s where we just were.”

  From that height they could see all the places they had gone throughout the day. First they had visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial, then up through SoHo and over to Greenwich Village. While the girls had gone shopping, the boys stopped at a street food cart and had a contest to see who could eat the most falafel balls. Rice won that contest hands down, with Zack coming in a close second.

  It was a pretty fun trip, but Zack was dying to get back to the hotel. His feet were killing him.

  Ms. Merriweather looked at her watch and raised her hand, getting everyone’s attention. “Everybody line up!”

  Zack jumped in line behind Madison, and the students began to shuffle back inside single-file.

  “Psst!” Rice grabbed Zack by the shirt collar and yanked him around the corner of the observation deck. They waited there until the coast was clear.

  “What the heck, man?” Zack said, massaging his neck. “That’s gonna leave a mark.” Rice ignored him, dropping to one knee and opening up his trusty backpack. “Dude, what are you doing?” asked Zack.

  “I’m going to reenact the finale scene from King Kong real quick. . . .” Rice rummaged around in his pack and produced a gorilla mask, a Barbie doll, and a model airplane strung to a wooden stick.

  “Fine. Just hurry up.” Zack chuckled to himself. “I don’t want to get in trouble with Mrs. G.” Zack took Rice’s smartphone and clicked the camera icon.

  “Okay,” Rice said, pulling the mask over his head. “Let’s do this.” He stood in front of the New York skyline and began to make some startlingly realistic monkey noises. In one ha
nd he held the Barbie; in the other, he dangled the model airplane strung to the stick so that it dive-bombed in front of his face.

  Zack clicked a few different pictures and then scrolled through them. “I think we got it,” he said. “Can we go now?”

  Rice took off the King Kong mask. He was sweating bullets. “Whew! This thing is hot as heck!” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “You okay, man?” Zack pocketed the smartphone and raised an eyebrow at his friend. “You don’t look so great.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m good. I’m good. . . .” Then, all of a sudden, Rice fell to his knees and flopped to one side on the ground. He clutched his stomach and let out a painful groan, coughing and squawking as a wave of spasms rippled through his spine.

  “Dude, give it a rest!” Zack said. “I told you, like, three months ago I’m not falling for any more of your stupid zombie fakeouts.”

  Down on the ground, Rice clutched his throat and gagged melodramatically before his body went completely limp. His head lolled to the side, and his tongue hung out of his mouth.

  “I swear, if you’re messing with me . . .” Zack knelt down next to Rice. Something was wrong. He grabbed Rice’s wrist but couldn’t find his pulse. Rice wasn’t breathing either! Zack’s heart started beating wildly as his best friend’s slumped body started to wriggle and convulse again uncontrollably.

  “Somebody help!” Zack called out. But no one heard him. They were all alone out on the observation deck. He laid his friend’s head down on the ground and ran for the door. Behind him Rice shot up with a jolt, growling like a zombie.

  Zack spun around as the boy who cried zombie hauled himself up and wobbled in place with his arms out in front of him. “Ha ha, real funny!” Zack shouted.But this was no joke.

  Rice’s face was twisted in a horrible grimace. His eyes were dull and pallid, and his complexion was rapidly turning a grayish green. The veins around his eyes spiderwebbed suddenly, as if they had been pumped full of dark green ink. Rice’s left eye was focused slightly off center, while the right eyeball looked directly at Zack.

  Zombie Rice hobbled across the deck and launched himself at Zack. “Blaaargh!”

  “Dude!” Zack screamed, backing away quickly. “Chill!”

  Rice lunged at Zack again, screeching like a savage hyena. He swiped his arms wildly, his hands whizzing by an inch in front of Zack’s nose.

  Zack backpedaled and tripped on an orange-and-white cone, falling back into a sectioned-off corner of the deck where the guardrail was undergoing construction. Zombie Rice kept after him, thrashing through the construction area. He waddled slowly forward with twin fangs of saliva drooling from his mouth. Zack reached over quickly and picked up a metal pipe, then hopped to his feet and raised it defensively. “Rice, if you don’t stop trying to eat my brains, I will be forced to hit you with this really freaking hard. Do you understand?”

  Rice sneered at Zack with a blank-eyed stare and a mischievous half smile. “Gibble-gabble-glarghle!” he blabbered, and charged forward once again.

  Zack raised the pipe like a batter bunting a fastball and deflected his rezombified friend’s attack, sending Rice flying into the broken guardrail.

  “Rice!” Zack called, rushing to the spot as his best friend flipped clean over the side of the Empire State Building. Peering over the ledge, Zack gasped in horror. The steel bars creaked as zombie Rice dangled one hundred and two stories above the ground, hanging with both hands from the bent metal guardrail.

  Zack felt a surge of panic rushing through his chest and stretched his arm as far as it would go. “Come on, buddy,” he urged, finally coiling his fingers around Rice’s wrist.

  Zombie Rice abandoned the guardrail and instead grabbed Zack’s forearm with both zombified hands. Zack strained with every ounce of strength he had, but he couldn’t lift Rice to save his life. Zack didn’t know how much longer he could hold on.

  “Ow, dude!” Zack yelled, almost losing his grip as zombie Rice gnawed at Zack’s finger joints. “No, no, no! Bad zombie!” He grimaced, tightening his grasp despite the pain of being Rice’s knuckle sandwich.

  “Here, Rice,” Zack said, bowing his head. “I got brains, right here . . . all you can eat! Come and get ’em.”

  Immediately, Zack’s voice caught his undead friend’s attention, and with his newfound target in sight, zombie Rice scaled the side of the building using Zack’s arm for leverage and his delicious brain-filled cranium as motivation. As Rice reached the top, Zack gave one final heave, pulling with all his might. Rice tumbled over the ledge and landed face-first on top of the observation deck. Zack toppled backward and landed on the ground in crab-walk position, completely out of breath.

  Zombie Rice rose mechanically off the ground and lumbered relentlessly toward Zack like a demonic windup robot. Rice’s jaw hung wide-open, and he let forth a ferocious howl that shook the little punching bag thingy dangling at the back of his throat.

  “Dude, what the heck?” Zack backed up on the heels of his palms, huffing and puffing. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted away from Rice to the outdoor storage closet on the deck. Rice approached him, biting the air savagely in front of him as if he were bobbing for apples.

  Zack baited himself in front of the door, waiting for Rice to waddle over. “Come on, slowpoke,” he said, scrutinizing his friend’s zombie walk.

  Rice had a pretty good shuffle and a first-rate snarl. Way better than any of his phony zombie impressions. As his rezombified friend neared the closet, Zack leaped swiftly out of the way, shoved Rice inside, and slammed the door shut.

  “Phew.” Zack sighed and stood for a moment in the semidarkness of the twilit sky. He clapped the dirt off his palms, then bolted inside the skyscraper, hustling to find the others.

  At the end of the hallway, Zoe, Madison, and Ozzie were waiting for the elevator.

  “You guys.” Zack panted, slow to catch his breath. “Come quick. You gotta see this. Rice just—”

  “Yo, little bro,” Zoe cut him off. “Ms. M and Mrs. G are going to be so ticked off at you guys. You’re really late.” A big smile stretched across her face. “They’ll probably call Mom and Dad on you.” Zoe exhaled a self-satisfied sigh. “You’re going to be in so much trouble.”

  “Hate to break it to you,” Zack said. “But we’re all in trouble.”

  “Not me,” Madison said. “I never get in trouble.”

  “Yeah, dork brains. We didn’t do anything,” Zoe said. “You’re the one who’s gonna get grounded by the parental units.”

  “Maybe,” Zack said. “If Mom and Dad aren’t rezombified already.”

  “Did you just say rezombified?” Ozzie asked.

  “Yes, I did, Ozzie,” Zack snapped at them all. “It’s a word I just had to make up when my best friend turned back into a flesh-eating mutant and tried to kill me.”

  “Zack, this really won’t be funny if you’re joking,” said Madison. “We’re on vay-cay, okay? Totally not trying to be stressed right now.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die!” Zack X’d his chest with one finger and inserted an imaginary needle in his eyeball. “This is serious, you guys!”

  “‘This is, like, really serious, you guys.’” Zoe mimicked Zack’s voice as the three of them reluctantly followed him back to the observation deck.

  “That’s not even what I said,” said Zack, pushing open the door.

  Ozzie chuckled. “That was a pretty good Zack impression, though.”

  “I don’t sound like that!” Zack grunted in frustration, grabbing the doorknob. He threw open the closet door to reveal their once unzombified human friend, now their dehumanized zombie friend.

  Zombie Rice wobbled in the doorframe with a crooked look on his wild-eyed face and a long blob of slimy mucus dripping from his nose. He cocked his head to the side like a curious kitten. “Br-ai-ns?” His voice cracked, gurgling with phlegm.

  “Arf!” Twinkles bared his teeth and snarled at the zombie like a we
ll-trained guard dog.

  Madison, Ozzie, and Zoe froze in place, all blinking with the same thunderstruck look, totally stupefied by the return of the living dead.

  Zack slammed the door shut and glared at his sister. “Told you so.”

  “Zachary Arbutus Clarke!” Zoe shouted, snapping out of her shocked stupor. “How could you let this happen?”

  “I didn’t let anything happen, dodo brain!”

  Zoe pointed at the door. “Then what do you call that?”

  “I don’t know,” Zack said. “You in the morning?”

  Ozzie chuckled and stuck out his fist, giving Zack a pound of respect. “Good one, bro!”

  “Yeah, laugh it up, you little nerdmongers,” Zoe said, with fire in her eyes and scorn on her lips. “See what happens.”

  “Okay, everyone just chill for a second,” Zack said, scratching his head. A long silence followed as Zack racked his brain for some possible answers. “It makes sense that Rice would be the first to change back, right?”

  “Why’s that?” asked Zoe.

  “Because,” Zack said, “he was the first one to eat the zombie popcorn.”

  “But that means . . . ,” Madison said, petting Twinkles, who sat in her new knockoff designer handbag. “Wait, what does that mean?”

  “Probably that the popcorn antidote is wearing off,” Ozzie concluded.

  “Something like that,” said Zack. “Maybe, who knows? But if Rice is rezombified, then it won’t be long before everyone who ate the popcorn is going to rezombify, too!”

  “All at once . . . ,” Ozzie said ominously.

  Zack’s eyes glazed over as he imagined the possibility of the whole country rezombifying all over again. Ozzie shuddered at the thought, too.