The Zombie Playground

by Brian Rowe

  He put his hands out and charged toward Brin.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Brin shouted and raised the club up high.

  He stumbled within two feet of her when Brin swung the golf club at the zombie like a baseball bat and promptly sliced the head off his body. Brin and Anaya watched in awe as the zombie’s head flew into the air, bounced off the fence, and landed on a small tuft of grass in front of the nearest lake.

  “Holy shit,” Anaya said.

  “Holy shit,” Brin repeated, still holding the club up high. She turned to Anaya and smiled big. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I don’t think I want to know.”

  “Check this out,” Brin said.

  She leapt forward fast, all the way up to the decapitated head. Brin looked down to see, in astonishment, that the eyes were still blinking.

  “Rot in Hell,” Brin said, an angry sneer on her face, as she swung the three-iron down against the zombie’s head and catapulted it high up into the air. She watched as the head splashed down into the center of the lake.

  “Nice one,” Anaya said.

  Brin turned back to the girl and pumped her fist a few times. “My best shot of the day.”

  Before Anaya had time to chuckle, and before Brin had time to celebrate her glorious shot any further, six zombies appeared to the right of the lake, pointed toward the duo, and started marching their way.

  “Oh, come on,” Brin said. “How many of them can there be?”

  “If it’s all the dead people who’ve ever been buried in Grisly Cemetery,” Anaya said, “then I would say, a lot!”

  “But we’re not in the cemetery,” Brin said, keeping the three-iron tight in her hand as she started moving toward the supposed shelter; it was turning out to be quite the lethal weapon, after all. “We’re on the golf course. Why would the zombies be crawling out of a golf course?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Something’s not right about this. There’s something we don’t know.”

  No zombie had spoken an actual word yet, but one turned toward Anaya as he led the pack of six. He was naked and obese, with a triple chin that stretched all the way down to a repulsive beer belly. “UNNNNYA,” he muttered.

  “Oh my God,” Anaya said, turning toward the zombie. “Uncle Pete?”

  The zombie grinned big and wide and started moving even faster.

  “Brin! That’s my uncle! He died last year from choking on a turkey sandwich!”

  “What? How old was he?”

  “Thirty-seven!”

  Brin decided not to pry further into the matter as she crept up behind the one-story building and looked for a way inside. A sole window on the left was blocked with big, heavy bars. They crept toward the front, in search of a door, as five more zombies joined the clan of the other six. Brin and Anaya weren’t close to alone now; nearly a dozen creatures were headed straight for them.

  “This is the worst day,” Anaya said.

  “What? Worse than Bodie?”

  “I didn’t see my dead uncle in Bodie, Brin!”

  They turned the corner to see a set of giant double-doors at the front of the building. Brin tried to open them, but they were locked.

  “Damn it!” Brin shouted.

  “I mean, what happened to us in Bodie… wasn’t that enough? Did we really need zombies to attack us, too?”

  “Anaya, focus.” Brin struck her foot against the center of the doors. The structure was made of wood, not hard steel. They could get through. “Come on, help me.”

  Anaya just stood there, her arms crossed, like she was gossiping with a friend on a Grisly High lunch break. “And then to see my uncle again… I never thought…”

  Brin tugged Anaya toward her and screamed, “Anaya! Help me kick the freaking door down!”

  Together they kicked against the doors. Twice. Three times. Five times. The zombies were yards away, feet away.

  “Come on!” Brin said, kicking again. “Harder!”

  They kicked again. They still couldn’t bust through.

  “UNNNNYA! UNNNNGRY!”

  Anaya’s zombie uncle leaned down and pressed his mouth against the back of her skull.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Oh, Jesus!” Anaya screamed. “Pete, I always knew you had a thing for me! You are so gross!” She turned around and this time, instead of kicking the door, she kicked her zombie uncle in the balls and watched him fall back in pain against the ground.

  Brin kicked again. The door was about to bust. “Come on!”

  “Give me my three-iron!” Anaya shouted. She ripped it out of Brin’s grasp, took a quick step forward, and pummeled the head of the climb down so hard and fast her uncle’s head split in two.

  “Yeah!” Anaya shouted. “Take that, you bastard!”

  Brin kicked one last time, and finally, the doors busted open.

  “Yes!” Brin said. “Anaya! Come on!”

  Anaya spit on her uncle’s zombie corpse and followed Brin into the building, barely fast enough to evade the grasps of five other ravenous creatures.

  “Help me close it!” Brin said, and the two leaned up against the doors, blocking the zombies from entering.

  But these creatures were strong. And they weren’t leaving the premises.

  “Shit,” Brin said, pushing against the doors with all her might. “Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”

  “No, duh!” Anaya said. “At least outside we had a fighting chance! Now we’re trapped!”

  They looked forward at a dark, open room. No lights were turned on, and the windows only illuminated part of the beige walls.

  “What the hell is in here?” Anaya said.

  “I’m hoping not more of them.”

  “Oh my God, that would suck. That would really—”

  A zombie hand crashed through the top of the doors and grabbed Brin’s shoulder. “You know what?” Brin said as she tried to break free. “This already sucks!”

  Brin pushed the hand away and bit down on the zombie’s middle finger. She chewed and chewed and chewed until the finger dropped from his hand and struck the cement ground.

  Anaya shook her head. “Ewww.”

  Brin pushed the hand away and ran into the blackness.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Anaya said.

  “To investigate.”

  “Investigate what?”

  “Keep pressing against the door. Don’t let the zombies in.”

  “Oh, OK! Yeah! Great idea!” Anaya shouted sarcastically as she shook her head and planted her back against the doors even harder. Another hand pierced through the door and reached for Anaya’s face. “Goddammit, Brin! Investigate faster!”

  “Wait a sec!”

  “No! No more waiting!”

  “I think I found something!”

  “You wanna share it with me?” A third hand crashed through the door. “I’m about to be split in ten pieces over here!”

  “Wait for it!”

  “Wait for what?”

  Anaya watched as all the lights in the room turned on. She had no idea what she was about to see, but she didn’t expect to see this.

  “That asshole lied to us!” Anaya said as she looked out at over fifty golf carts, lined up in rows and columns. “We didn’t have to freaking walk after all!”

  Brin rushed over to the golf cart in the front and center. These weren’t old school carts of the Arnold Palmer era; these were brand new, jacked up, modernly designed vehicles of power.

  She twisted the little gold key and turned on the cart. Four more hands burst through the door. Anaya couldn’t hold the creatures back any longer.

  “Hurry!” Anaya said. “They’re getting in!

  Brin sighed with relief as the cart’s engine roared to life. She waved for Anaya to come over and jump onto the passenger side.

  “Anaya! Come on! Leave it!”

  “But… but… they’re gonna get in!”

  “Let them!”

  “OK!”
Anaya let out a scream as another hand burst through the top of the door, just inches above Anaya’s head. She ran forward for the cart. “Ohhhhhh shit!”

  Anaya leapt into the cart as fifteen zombies broke through the double doors and marched forward. Brin tried to back up to get more speed, but another cart was right behind them.

  “Oh my God,” Anaya said in a frantic tone, staring at the all the moaning bodies headed their way. “There’s so many!”

  “I know!”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “The only thing we can do.” Brin slammed her foot against the pedal. “We’re gonna mow them down.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Anaya covered her eyes with her hands as Brin sped the golf cart toward the opening. Some of the zombies wisely moved out of the cart’s path, but others stayed put. And even though Brin didn’t think a golf cart, versus, say, a giant tank, could do much damage, she was shocked to see the zombies fall to the ground so quickly. A large glass screen covered the front of the cart, so the first three zombies to go down left their bloody yellow marks on the dash.

  “It’s working!” Brin shouted. “Anaya, it’s working!”

  Anaya still had her hands over her eyes. “I’m not looking!”

  Brin felt the tires roll over the bodies, crushing heads and necks, rocketing Brin and Anaya back and forth on the golf cart seat like they were on a wild rollercoaster.

  She pushed past the last of the clan and emerged victorious into the sunlight, running over Anaya’s uncle’s split-open head for good measure.

  “We made it,” Brin said. “We’re free!”

  “Can I open my eyes now?”

  “Open them!”

  Anaya looked out. This cart wasn’t creeping forward at five miles per hour; it was zooming at top speeds, like an extra jolt of caffeine had been added to the engine.

  Brin passed over the fairway of the fourth hole and kept the three-story clubhouse as her point of destination.

  “Do you see the others?” Brin said.

  “No. Where do you think they are?”

  “They have to be in the clubhouse by now, or maybe the parking lot. That’s where our cars are. That’s how we get out of here!”

  “Do you think they left us behind?”

  “Well if you hadn’t stormed off in the other direction, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this mess!”

  “No, but—”

  Anaya didn’t have a chance to speak her mind, because in mid-sentence a zombie latched onto the back bumper of the cart, pulled himself up, and grabbed Anaya’s hair.

  “Oh my God!” she shouted.

  “Oh shit!” Brin said.

  “Get him off me!”

  The creature, this one with no family ties to Anaya, was moaning louder than all the others combined. He had his mouth wide open, like he wanted to swallow Anaya’s head whole, as he gripped tightly onto Anaya’s curly brown hair and swiped his rotting hands at her plump cheeks.

  Brin reached the top of a hill. “OK, Anaya. Just hold on. One more minute.”

  “One more minute? I don’t have one more second!”

  Brin slammed the pedal to the metal and the golf cart roared down the hill, toward the eighteenth hole green, toward the clubhouse. The zombie started crawling his way farther and farther into the cart.

  “Hold on,” Brin said.

  “He’s got me!” Anaya said. “Oh God, he’s gonna eat me!”

  “Ten seconds!”

  “What? No!”

  “Nine seconds!”

  The zombie pulled himself up over Anaya, wrapped his fingers against her cheeks, and started licking her forehead.

  “Brin!”

  “Three seconds!”

  “Brin! For God’s sake!”

  “Two!”

  “He’s gonna eat me!”

  “One!”

  “One?”

  “Hold on!”

  Brin closed her eyes as the cart struck a tree at thirty miles per hour. The zombie flew forward and crashed through the glass, catapulting into the air and landing on his neck on gravel pavement forty yards up ahead.

  Anaya promptly fell out of the cart and hit the grass. “Oh my God…”

  Brin opened her eyes. Pieces of glass, hunks of hair, and spatters of gooey yellow blood covered the front of the cart. Brin turned to her right to see Anaya pressing her hands against her forehead.

  “Anaya? Are you OK?” Brin stepped out of the cart and promptly cracked her neck. She had whiplash, but she didn’t feel injured.

  Brin looked up to see blood—the normal red kind—running down Anaya’s forehead. “I hit… I hit my head…”

  “Oh God,” Brin said, rushing up to the girl to analyze the damage.

  “My head… it hurts…”

  “Let me see.”

  “Was it the zombie? Did he bite me?”

  Brin wiped the blood away to see a large cut at the top of her forehead. “No. Oh, thank God. No, you just hit your head when we crashed.”

  “Why did we crash?”

  “I had to kill the zombie.”

  “Did it work? Is he dead?”

  Brin stepped to the side of the cart. The zombie had cracked his head open. The yellow blood matter stained the ground all the way from the pavement to the clubhouse side door.

  “Uhh, yeah,” Brin said. “He’s a goner.”

  “Are there others coming?”

  Brin turned around. Many were stomping their way, twenty at least. Zombies of all shapes and sizes, of all genders and sexual orientations, of all social and economic backgrounds, of all gruesome and morbid visages of death, were marching toward Brin and Anaya down the steep hill.

  “Come on,” Brin said, grabbing Anaya’s hand and leading her around the clubhouse.

  Anaya wiped most of the blood from her forehead. “Look! Brin! A door!”

  “No,” she said. “We’re not going in there.”

  “Why not?”

  Brin grabbed the car keys from her pocket. “I drove here. I’ve got my Jeep. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Brin jumped in front of Anaya and ran for the parking lot. As she circled around the clubhouse, Brin again recognized the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t thirsty. She wasn’t even tired. She had been running for what seemed like an hour or more, and yet she felt like she could run for the rest of the day. As recently as last semester, she could barely run a lap around the Grisly High football field without collapsing in a heap of embarrassment, but that mentality had certainly changed in the last two weeks. As she turned the corner to the parking lot, she shook her head in amazement: there’s something about getting chased, especially from those who want to eat you, that keeps you going and going and going…

  She spotted her car in the distance and ran frantically toward it.

  But then she stopped. Something was wrong.

  Oh no.

  Her precious Jeep was upside down.

  “What the hell,” Brin said, as Anaya abruptly bumped into her from behind.

  They looked forward to see at least fifteen zombies annihilating her flipped-over car, breaking the windows, striking the bumper, destroying the tires with crowbars.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Anaya said. “Why would they want to destroy your car?”

  Brin took a step forward. Her jaw dropped when she heard the screams coming from inside.

  “Oh no!” Brin shouted. “Noooooooo!”

  Ash and Paul were in the car.

  Chapter Thirty

  Ash caught sight of Brin. “Brin! Help us!”

  “We’re coming!”

  Brin prepared to rush forward toward the carnage, but Anaya pulled her back. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’ve got to save them!”

  “How? Those creatures are gonna kill you!”

  Brin raised Anaya’s three-iron up high.

  “No!” Anaya said. “You can hurt one at a time with
that thing, but not twelve at once!”

  “Brin! Help!” Paul screamed, like he was a human, like he wasn’t a vampire who should have been able to hold his own against other creatures of the supernatural variety.

  “Pleeeeeease!” Ash added.

  The zombies were swarming the car. More surprising, even though Brin and Anaya had clearly made themselves known, none of the zombies was paying them any attention.

  Maybe there’s something about Paul’s flesh that attracts them more, Brin thought, but she quickly tossed the thought aside.

  “We can’t help them,” Anaya said. “We have to leave them.”

  “NO! Shut up, Anaya!” Brin pushed Anaya back. “Leaving them is not an option!”

  “Are you really gonna die for them?”

  Brin stared at Anaya, her eyes shooting every which way. She needed to save Paul and Ash. She didn’t have a good plan. But she had something.

  “I’m… I’m sorry, Anaya,” Brin said.

  “Sorry? About what?”

  Brin tossed the golf club aside and kneeled down to grab a piece of glass from her car’s broken windshield.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Anaya said, bewildered.

  Brin pulled Anaya’s hand toward hers and slashed the knife through her palm. Blood dripped to the ground instantly, as Anaya pressed against her wrist and opened her mouth wide with surprise.

  “Owww! What the! Why did you—”

  Anaya looked back toward the car. The zombies stopped climbing over each other. One zombie turned around, then two, then five. Pretty soon all but a select two of the creatures turned around, and deferred their lunchtime meal from the boys to the fat girl.

  “What have you done?” Anaya said, taking a step backward.

  “I have a plan.”

  “Some plan! How ‘bout I slash you with some glass?”

  “Just trust me.”

  “This shouldn’t even work!” Anaya said. “These are zombies, not vampires! They shouldn’t even care about my blood!”

  Brin turned toward the yellow monstrosities. “I beg to differ,” she said.

  One of the zombie’s necks was cracked, making the figure walk with a debilitating stumble. A female zombie’s face looked like it had completely melted off; only a thin brown layer of dried mucous covered her thin skeletal frame. And then Brin and Anaya saw the boy: no older than five, he was the most human-like of the zombies, with flesh more orange than yellow. He gritted his angry baby teeth and moved ahead of the pack. The adults kept walking at a glacial pace, while the boy started running.