The Zombie Chasers #4

by John Kloepfer

  “Ew, Zack, gross!” Madison cringed. “What’s that for?”

  “You know how they lead a horse by dangling a carrot in front of its face?”

  “Yeah,” Madison said. “I guess.”

  “Same idea,” Zack said, digging through Rice’s pack for supplies. “Except zombies don’t like carrots. . . .” He tied the brain with string from the backpack to the end of one of the umbrellas and held the strung-up brain over Rice’s head, keeping it just out of biting distance. “They like brains.” He smiled.

  Zombie Rice marched ahead, led by Zack dangling the brain in front of his face. They all crossed the street together, retracing their steps through the Central Park gates into the green oasis at the center of Manhattan. They worked their way down a dirt path winding through a patch of contorted trees twisting up out of the ground like giant hands clawing for outer space.

  A patch of clouds blotted out the moon, and the night darkened, making it much harder to distinguish zombies from shadows. The park was less infested than Midtown had been, but there were still plenty of undead city dwellers prowling through this man-made wilderness.

  Zack was doing his best to lead zombie Rice quickly along the trail, but the brain was attracting some unwanted attention.

  “Glyrghlphle!” Dozens of flesh-hungry lunatics stumbled down the hills and rocky slopes.

  “Are you sure this was a good idea, little bro?” whispered Zoe from behind.

  “Actually,” Zack whisper-yelled back, “I guess I didn’t really think it all the way through.”

  “Ahhh!” Madison shrieked as a balding zombie man with long stringy blond hair shambled onto the pathway.

  “Hey!” Zack shouted, and swung the tethered brain in front of the zombie freak like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. The undead creep stopped in place and grunted, his blank white eyes following the brain.

  “Hi-ya!” Madison cranked back her arm and thumped the zombie on his noggin. The beast dropped to his knees and fell face-forward into the dirt.

  “Come on, you two,” Ozzie called back. “Keep up!”

  Zack held the umbrella over Rice’s head again and zombie Rice marched forward, still desperate to get at the brain. The closer Zack held the brain to Rice’s face, the faster he seemed to go. Zack picked up the pace, speed-walking now, and caught up with the gang.

  Madison and Zoe were tag-teaming a zombified guy in tennis shorts and a white collared shirt. Madison whipped her handbag at the zombie’s legs and at the same time Zoe clobbered him in the side of the head. The undead tennis pro flipped head over heels and landed on the grass with a crunchy splat.

  Ozzie ran up to a zombie lurching forward out of the tree-lined path. The mutant grown-up looked like a giant dweeb, with baggy khaki pants and a tucked-in polo shirt. A nasty growth of scabby boils hung off its eye cavity like a cluster of overripe grapes. Ozzie thwacked the undead madman in the face, squashing the mass of clustered boils, which burst like a pus-filled piñata.

  Zack paused, taking a second to scan the park. He kept Rice still by lifting the brain over Rice’s noggin. This was the right spot, Zack thought, though the place looked different in the dark.

  “Are we almost there?” asked Madison, stopping beside him.

  Then Zack saw it, the trash can holding the key to their salvation.

  “Over there,” Zack said, handing the umbrella to Madison as they ran to the spot. “Here, take Rice.” Madison brain-teased Rice with one hand and shined her iPhone’s flashlight app into the trash can with the other so Zack could see what he was doing. Zack peered down into the garbage bin filled with people’s disgusting trash that had piled up throughout the day. Zack reached down and riffled through the can in search of Madison’s magical Band-Aid.

  Zack tossed out old Chinese food containers and sticky coffee cups that stank of sour milk, but he didn’t care. He was so close to getting exactly what they came for. He pulled up another handful of garbage and sifted through it— a brown-spotted banana peel and some used Kleenex.

  “Yuck!” said Madison, bringing her iPhone up to her mouth to hold back her nausea. “It’s not there.”

  “Wait. Gimme the light,” said Zack, pulling out yet another handful of trash, this time a greasy paper plate from their pizza picnic earlier in the day. Stuck on the end of the plate, a lone Band-Aid hung. Zack’s eyes grew wide, and he plucked it off, pinching the unzombifying bandage in front of his face like an old-school movie director looking at a strip of film. A large red dot of Madison’s vegan blood stained the white pad. “I got it!” Zack shouted. “I got it!”

  Behind him, zombie Rice spun around in a circle as he bit through his King Kong mask, chomping futilely at the museum brain dangling above his head. He still looked like a person with an ape’s head, although now the gorilla had a human mouth and teeth. Rice spun and spun, making himself dizzy.

  “Guys!” Zack said, and turned to show Ozzie and Zoe. “We got—”

  “Rice!” Madison shouted, losing her grip on the umbrella. “Get back here!”

  “Blarghle-snargle!”

  Wham!

  Zombie Rice bumped into Zack, gnawing blindly at the air. Completely caught off guard, Zack put up his hands to block his best friend’s zombie assault. Rice’s two front teeth nipped the Band-Aid from Zack’s fingertips, and time slowed to a standstill.

  “Nooooooooo!” Zack screamed, his eyes widening. He grabbed for the King Kong mask, but zombie Rice thrashed him to the ground before he could. Zack’s rear end hit the damp grass as he watched his monkey-headed friend gobble up the Band-Aid.

  Zack crawled over quickly and grabbed Rice by the face. “No!” he yelled. “Spit it out!”

  But it was too late.

  Rice had just swallowed their only hope. “Guggh!” Zombie Rice belched once and keeled over as his whole body fell slack in the grass.

  Wearing his night-vision goggles, Ozzie Briggs karate-chopped the last zombie in their area—an undead skater punk rocking ripped jeans and a tank top showing off his mangled, tattooed arm. The zombie’s innards sloshed from the kung fu blow, and twin streams of yolky mucus shot out from both his nostrils. Ozzie dodged the slimy shrapnel and jogged over to where Zack was sitting next to Rice’s now unconscious body lying in the grass. “What the— What did you do?” Ozzie asked pulling off his goggles.

  Zoe came over, filling in the blanks. She pointed to her brother. “He found the Band-Aid, which was really, really awesome, but also pretty gross. Then Rice ate the Band-Aid, which was even grosser, but not nearly as awesome.”

  “What the heck, man?” Ozzie yelled. “You let him eat the Band-Aid?”

  “I didn’t let him do anything,” Zack said, rising to his feet. “Maybe if you weren’t such a showboat, you would have been over here helping us out.”

  “Showboat?” Ozzie shouted, and jumped over Rice, who lay prone on the grass at their feet. “I’m the one who’s been doing all the work and saving your puny butt all over town!”

  “Hey,” Zoe joined in the yelling. “Nobody talks to my brother like that except for moi. Plus, I save his butt, like, every two seconds! So don’t go taking all the credit.”

  Twinkles walked over to Rice and lapped a globule of slime off his King Kong mask. Just then Rice’s eyes snapped open, but everyone was too busy yelling to notice.

  “Can we please stop bickering?” Madison said. “We’re on the same team. What are we supposed to do now? That stupid Band-Aid was our only hope!”

  “Guys?” Rice’s voice sounded from behind the mask. “What’s going on? Why am I all tied up?”

  “Rice!” Zack shouted happily. “You’re not a zombie anymore!” He ran over

  and helped his

  buddy to his feet.

  Zoe, however, went up to Rice and whacked him upside the head. “Thanks a lot, monkey brains. Now we’re all dead meat.”

  “Ow!” Rice yelled, grabbing his head and pulling off the mask. “What was our only hope?”

  “The
Band-Aid!” everyone shouted.

  “What Band-Aid?”

  “The one Madison had on before she ate the pizza!” Zoe shouted.

  “Yo,” said Rice. “How good was that pizza?”

  “Yeah,” said Zack. “So good it unveganized her blood.”

  Rice turned to look at Madison. “No way!”

  “Afraid so, Ricey-poo,” Madison said.

  “Listen, dude,” Zack said. “The popcorn antidote just all of a sudden wore off and everyone who ate it rezombified. Including you. Madison can’t unzombify anything anymore, and the Band-Aid you ate was the last drop of antidote on the planet. But despite all that, it’s great to have you back, even though you messed everything up. No offense.”

  “Well, then,” said Rice. “We just gotta make a new Madison!”

  “Well, that’s obviously going to be impossible,” Madison said. “I’m one of a kind.”

  “But maybe you’re onto something,” Zack said. “Duplessis did say we had to find more vegans.”

  Madison pointed to her new Bio-Wear shoes from Macy’s. “Oooh, look up Bio-Wear! Their company is based in Brooklyn. They advertised that everything from the material to the employees handling the shoes were vegan. Maybe that will give us a lead.”

  Rice pulled out his phone, did a quick Google search, and found that Bio-Wear also owned an Organic Food Warehouse in Brooklyn that hosted a vegan meet-up group nearly every night.

  “OMG,” Madison said. “I’ve totally heard of that.”

  “Good call, guys,” Ozzie said. “But can we continue this conversation somewhere else?” Ozzie pointed to a humongous throng of zombies moving across the park grounds. The undead creepazoids stalked through Central Park as if they were wading through a knee-deep pool of Jell-O.

  “Run!” Zack shouted.

  They took off into the park until Madison came to a halt. “You guys hear that?” she asked as everyone stopped alongside her.

  They looked in the direction of the noise and saw a black-and-white horse attached to a carriage. The horse struggled to pull the carriage between two trees, but the big wheels were too wide to make it through. The poor horse whinnied desperately as a quartet of zombified bird-watchers staggered toward the creature. The undead bird-watchers moaned and wailed with binoculars around their putrid, flaking necks.

  “Come on, guys!” Madison shouted. “We’ve got to save him!”

  “Are you kidding me?” Rice asked.

  “She’s right, Rice,” said Ozzie. “If we help him, we won’t have to get out of the park on foot, and I can ride.”

  “Hurry up,” Madison said. “They’re going to rip out his little horsey brains!”

  They all ran over to where the horse and buggy were wedged between the trees. Zoe walloped the zombie bird-watchers one at a time, while Madison and the boys guided the horse backward, dislodging the carriage from the tree trunks.

  Zack, Zoe, Madison, and Rice hopped into the carriage, and Ozzie jumped up in the driver’s seat with Twinkles perched anxiously on his lap.

  “Giddyap!” Madison yelled.

  Ozzie slapped the reins and the horse began to trot, pulling the carriage away from the zombie onrush.

  As they rode in the buggy, Rice looked off into the zombified park, pinching the air in front of his eyeball. Every time his index finger touched his thumb, he made torpedo noises.

  “What are you doing?” Zack said.

  “I’m pretending I can crush the zombies with my fingers.”

  Zoe lined up Rice’s head and pinched the air in front of her own eyeball. “Pow!”

  “Hold on, guys!” Ozzie yelled as zombies started to stumble onto the pathway, flailing their arms at the carriage. Ozzie slapped the reins and the horse began to pick up speed.

  The carriage flew along the walking path that curved around the bank of a pond. As they galloped ahead, Zack recognized one of the zombies from earlier that day. The zombie stilt walker must have been thirteen feet tall, and it was lumbering into their path.

  “Watch out!” Zack yelled.

  The horse and buggy were going too fast to swerve, and the undead street clown toppled into the carriage, spooking the horse. The carriage shook and bounced as the animal neighed and veered off the path full steam ahead toward the pond. Ozzie tightened the reins to steer the horse back on track, but just then one of the zombie clown’s long wooden stilts slipped between the spokes in the wheel of the carriage.

  The buggy flipped and sent them all spinning through the air in what seemed like slow motion. Zack opened his eyes mid-somersault and caught a clear view of the moon, now free of the clouds, hanging low in the starry sky. Before he could look anywhere else, Zack belly-flopped into the pond with Rice screaming, “Cowabunga!”

  Kersplash! Madison and Zoe both cannonballed into the water with a double plunk, and the undead stilt-walking clown plunked into the water after them.

  Zack rose out of the rippling water, gasping for air. He was drenched and covered in green algae. Madison and Zoe brushed pond scum out of their hair.

  As they waded back to dry land, Rice did a quick head count. “Where’s Ozzie?”

  Zack pointed across the green to the detached horse galloping away from the wreckage of the carriage. Ozzie was nowhere to be seen.

  “OMG!” Madison gasped. “Twinkles! Where’s Twinkles!”

  “Tween-kles!” Rice called. “Ozz-eee!” He looked down at his shoeless foot. “Hey! What happened to my sneaker?”

  Zack looked down at his mismatched footwear. “Sorry, man. You owed me one.”

  The Central Park riffraff prowled along the greens, swarms and swarms of zombie creeps teetering toward them in an unrelenting torrent of tooth and claw.

  There was nowhere to hide. They had to get out of the park, with or without Ozzie and Twinkles.

  Zack, Madison, Zoe, and Rice jogged down a dark side street on the Upper East Side, soaking wet from the pond in Central Park.

  Brownstones and tenements lined both sides of the block. The fire escapes on the front of the apartment buildings looked like Zs stacked on top of one another.

  “We have to find Twinkles,” Madison said, her puppy-dog eyes welling up with tears.

  “More important,” said Rice, “we’ve got to find Ozzie. There’s no way we’re leaving him!”

  “But first,” Zack called to them, “we need to find some wheels. . . .”

  A short way down the next block they spotted a row of unchained bicycles belonging to a crew of zombified food delivery guys. The undead delivery dudes crisscrossed, tottering slantwise around their bikes. As Rice and the girls scoped out their wheels, Zack locked eyes with one of the zombie brutes, who grunted and licked his gangrenous chops. All at once, three of his rezombified buddies turned, casting their dead-eyed gazes on their brain-nuggety prey. The undead clan of bike messengers lurched slowly toward them. Something foul oozed from one of their eye sockets like egg yolk.

  “Okay, guys, one, two, three!” Zack, Rice, Zoe, and Madison bum-rushed the zombified delivery guys. Zack swung a surviving umbrella and hooked a lanky zombie by the neck. He followed through and the undead beast slammed to the ground with a dull splat. Rice ran behind the zombified goon with the dribbling eyeball and crouched behind his knees. Madison sprinted and lowered her shoulder into the zombie’s waist. The undead brain glutton tripped over Rice and hit the cement hard with the back of his skull. Zoe took a run and knocked out the remaining two of the mutant chowhounds with a jab-hook combo. The flesh-eating hellions tottered, swaying slightly before they both dropped to the pavement.

  “I don’t want to toot my own horn,” Zoe said, making a muscle and kissing her biceps, “but I’m really good at this.”

  Zack rolled his eyes and snagged a delivery bike, then took off, worming his way through the Big Apple.

  “Ozzie!” Rice and Zack chanted as they weaved in and out of zombie foot traffic. “Ozz-eeee!”

  “Twinkles!” Madison shouted, her voice tre
mbling with worry. “Twinkles!”

  But all they heard were the undead moans reverberating across Manhattan.

  Zack rode behind the other three, following their lead as they turned a corner and disappeared down another street. Zack had just steered his handlebars to make the turn when his front tire hit a patch of slime. “Ahhhh!” Zack cried as the bike skidded out of control.

  He crashed into a street lamp and hit the deck hard, falling facedown in a sewer grate. He scrambled to his feet and wiped the zombie sludge off his hands. He looked all around, but Rice, Zoe, and Madison were nowhere in sight. A harsh wind blew debris along the sidewalk, sending ripples through the puddles of sludge gathered along the curb. The street lamps flickered like giant lightning bugs. Thick white steam rose up from a nearby manhole cover like the contrails of an evil spirit. The foggy steam switched color—red to green—under the glow of the changing traffic lights.

  Zack ran over to grab the bicycle that he’d crashed onto the sidewalk, but just then a zombie horde staggered out of the fog. There were middle-aged women wearing fur coats and pearls, followed closely by their zombified husbands dressed in black tie. The upper-class horde trampled over the bicycle and backed Zack up against a restaurant on the west side of the street.

  “Help!” Zack yelled, retreating under the awning of the outdoor seating area.

  Zack looked over his shoulder into the dining room of the bistro. A zombie yuppie couple sat calmly at a candlelit table, getting served two entrées of brains mignon, medium-rare, by an undead waiter. The zombie couple dug into their brain filets.

  The swarm of zombified well-to-doers continued to close in on Zack, dragging their feet and howling for brains. Zack looked around for some kind of defense and snatched a chair from the outside seating area. He held the chair up like a lion tamer at a circus, wooden legs pointing toward the zombies.

  As he faced the oncoming swarm, a high-class zombie housewife rushed forward to the front of the pack. Zack thrust the chair and whacked the beast square in the head. The undead freak dropped to the pavement.