by R. McGeddon
“Emmie, you came back!” he said, grinning broadly as he pulled the door wide open. The smile fell away immediately. The thing on the doorstep wasn’t Emmie. Not unless Emmie had rapidly put on weight, become a fully grown man, and died.
“Braaaaaiiins!” groaned Mr. Gristle, and he stumbled forward into the house, hands grabbing for Sam as a dozen or more zombies pushed in behind him. YOU SEE! Zombies do knock on doors sometimes! Even Arty can’t be right all the time.
Sam danced back as Phoebe and Arty rushed into the kitchen. He tried to push the door closed, but the zombies were already inside, their mournful moans filling the room and rattling the dishes in the sink.
“Change of plan,” Sam announced. “We need to go. Now!”
The zombies seemed to be taking a special interest in Arty. Whether they could sense his larger-than-average brain or liked the look of his plumper-than-average body, it was impossible to say, but they swarmed toward him like piranhas. But with arms and legs and that. And not in water. So not much like piranhas at all, really. I take that back.
“S-stay back,” Arty warned, fumbling in the waistband of his pants. “I’m warning you, don’t make me use this!”
“Hey, that’s my toothbrush,” Sam protested.
“It’s a personal Bristly Eye Poker!” Arty replied. Then he squealed in terror as Mr. Gristle’s sausagelike fingers wrapped around his neck.
“Braaaaaiiins!”
“Hey, butcher-man, meat my fist!” cried Sam, swinging a punch at Mr. Gristle’s head. It sent the zombie staggering backward, knocking over several other zombies like bowling pins.
“Meat my fist?” snorted Phoebe. “OMG, that was so lame.”
“I thought it was quite clever, actually,” wheezed Arty.
Sam flashed him a smile. “Thanks,” he said. “Now come on, out the front door!”
They dashed back into the living room, clambered over the sofa, and raced for the door. Sam had stacked furniture in front of it to keep the zombies out. He and Arty set to work clearing it all away again as the living dead struggled to bypass the obstacle of the sofa. (Zombies can be surprisingly fast, but they aren’t good climbers.)
“Hurry up!” Phoebe urged.
“You could help, you know!” Sam replied.
“Hello? Do you know how long it took to get these fingernails perfect? They might break.”
“We might die!” Arty cried.
Phoebe crossed her arms. “Then at least I’ll die with perfect fingernails.”
With a roar of effort, Sam shoved a sideboard aside, just as the zombies prepared to lunge. “Done!” he cried. He pulled open the door.
And then he stopped dead, as he realized he was looking right down the double barrels of a particularly nasty-looking shotgun.
* * *
How a Zombie Virus Spreads
1. Zombie bites
2. Zombie sneezes
3. Zombie kisses (don’t ask)
4. You know when a zombie explodes and a little bit gets in your mouth and you’re all, like, “Eww, that was disgusting. I’m going to throw up”? That.
* * *
Let us journey back in time now, my friends. Back to a time before man had set foot upon the Earth, when dinosaurs roamed and the planet’s crust was a shifting mass of inhospitable molten rock.
Then let us journey forward in time again. Forward to a time when Emmie had just left Sam’s house, and the planet’s crust was largely quite nice, depending on whom you asked.
Emmie wasn’t happy. Given the morning’s events, that wasn’t entirely surprising, I suppose—but it wasn’t the zombies who had made her unhappy. It was Sam and the others.
Don’t get me wrong—even though she had enjoyed slapping Phoebe across the face, she was delighted to be away from her. She was quite annoyed at Sam and Arty, though, who seemed to be taking this whole legions-of-the-living-dead thing a bit too seriously, if you asked her.
It was only a few zombies, and she didn’t quite see what the big deal was. The army was probably already gathered at the Town Hall, where the rest of Sitting Duck would all be sitting down to a nice cup of tea and some cake.
Zombies, she thought. A-Lot-of-Fuss-About-Nothing-ies, more like.
Still, she figured it might not be a bad idea to grab her baseball bat from her garden, just in case she came across any flesh-eaters on the way to the Town Hall and had to batter their heads in for them.
Great-Aunt Doris was peering down at her from an upstairs window when Emmie vaulted over the fence and into her garden. Emmie gave her a quick wave and picked up the bat from where she’d left it lying on the grass. Her schoolbag was there, too, right where she’d abandoned it yesterday. She opened it, tipped out the books, and swung the straps over her shoulders.
“Oi!” hissed Doris, opening the window just a crack. “You dead?”
“What?”
“I said, you dead?”
Emmie shook her head. “Not that I’ve noticed.”
Doris tutted. “More’s the pity.” She scowled. Then she slammed the window and swished the curtains closed.
Emmie watched the window for a few seconds, shrugged, and made for the front gate. A savage roar erupted from one garden over, followed by the high-speed whine of an electric weed trimmer.
Mr. Stringer, one of Great-Aunt Doris’s neighbors, was racing along his garden path, holding the trimmer out in front of him like a jousting lance. Emmie wasn’t sure what Mr. Stringer did for a living, but she suspected it had something to do with numbers, filing cabinets, or the color gray. He just had that sort of look about him. Normally.
Today he looked rather different. The mud-brown tie he usually had neatly fastened around his neck was now knotted around his head. His normally crisply pressed shirt was creased and bloodstained, and he had completely forgotten to put his pants on.
A group of zombies was making its way up the path toward him, but Mr. Stringer didn’t appear the least bit afraid. He charged at them, the spinny bit of his electric trimmer spinning good and proper.
“HAVE SOME OF THIS!” he roared as he reached the zombies. With a loud boing sound—which would’ve been pretty funny in any other situation—the electric cable attached to the back of the trimmer went tight, and, somewhere at Mr. Stringer’s house, the plug pulled free of the wall.
The spinny bit stopped spinning. Mr. Stringer stopped running.
“Oh dear,” he said. Then the zombies were on him, chewing and munching and making a mess of his shirt that no amount of stain remover would ever be able to get out.
Emmie knew it was too late to save Mr. Stringer. Maybe if she found a bucket she might’ve been able to save some of him, but he wouldn’t have been in any state to thank her for it. She turned and ran for the park instead, planning to cut through it toward the Town Hall and hopefully avoid stumbling upon any more grisly scenes.
On only her third step into the park, she slipped on the slick grass and landed perilously close to a puddle of gunk. Professor Pamplemousse lay on the grass beside her. Or parts of him did, at least. Other parts were scattered here and there across the play area, and part of a leg was dangling from a nearby tree. By the looks of him, running away earlier hadn’t worked out too well. Maybe Mr. Gristle had caught up with him in the end, or maybe he’d failed to spot some other undead maniac until it was too late. Alas, we’ll never know for sure. Whatever happened, though, he wasn’t going to be recovering in a hurry.
Emmie was about to get up and run when she spotted something sticking out of Professor Pamplemousse’s top pocket. It was one of his kidneys.
But there was something else there, too. She looked closer and saw a number of little glass test tubes, each one containing a gloopy liquid and sealed at the top with a rubber stopper.
Emmie reached down, plucked them out, and stuffed them into her backpack. As she straightened up, she spotted Arty’s brother, Jesse. He was wandering around by the skate park, just a few yards from the play area. He looked con
fused and still half soaked from the water bombing, but then “confused” was Jesse’s standard facial arrangement.
“Hey, Jesse!” she hissed. “Psst! Over here.”
Jesse turned and Emmie immediately realized her mistake. Jesse’s eyes were lifeless and dull. When he fixed his gaze on her, Emmie felt a shiver run down her spine. She tried to duck behind the half-pipe, but it was too late. Jesse had seen her.
And he was closing in for the kill.
* * *
Backpack Supplies for the Zombie Apocalypse
Good:
Bad:
Weapons
Homework
First-aid kit
A valuable piece of art
More weapons
A baby panda
Food
Rotten meat
Radio
A high-pitched alarm that won’t shut up
Even more weapons
Anything weighing more than you do
Clean pants
A zombie
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sam and the others raised their hands. “Don’t shoot!” Sam cried.
“No choice, I’m afraid,” barked a gruff voice from the other end of the gun. “Suggest you duck, though, and be jolly quick about it.”
Sam dropped to his knees, pulling Arty and Phoebe down with him. There was a sound like the belching of a thunder god, and lead spat from both barrels of the gun. Across the room, a zombie was transformed into a brightly colored smear on the wallpaper.
As the shooter lowered his gun and hurried to reload, Sam recognized his next-door neighbor. “Major Muldoon,” he said, slapping himself on the forehead. “I should have known!”
“Bang on, old bean,” said the major, his bushy white mustache standing to attention. “And speaking of bangs…”
He fired again at the zombies, and two more zombies became damp stains on Sam’s living room carpet. Sam thought his mom would probably be furious. Assuming she hadn’t already been eaten, of course, in which case a messy carpet was probably quite low on her list of priorities.
“That should hold the blighters back for a moment,” said the major, grinning proudly. “Bit of a rum situation this, eh, young Sam? End of the world, some say.”
“Who says?” asked Arty.
Major Muldoon shrugged. “Well … me, mostly. Tallyho!”
He swung with his gun and blasted another approaching zombie. “But by Jove they make terrific target practice, what! I haven’t had this much fun in years! Ptchow! Bang! And so on and so forth!”
“Oh, terrific,” muttered Phoebe. “He’s a maniac.”
“Any idea what caused it?” Sam asked the major.
“Not the foggiest,” the major replied. “Don’t know, don’t care. Shooting the blighters is ruddy good sport, though!”
“I think … I think I might know,” said Arty, before the roar of another shotgun blast interrupted him. “At least I’m trying to formulate a theory, but it’s a bit hard with all the groaning of ‘braaaaaiiins’ going on, and the major shooting the place up.” He took a deep breath. “I think this must’ve been caused by the gunk in Professor Pamplemousse’s lesson.”
“The stuff that hit Simon? But I thought zombies were the ones that bust out of graveyards?” asked Sam.
Arty nodded. “Yes, but the two chemicals Pamplemousse used must have combined to have the same effect. It makes people brain-dead and then brings them back as one of those—”
Blam!
Major Muldoon let out a loud “Hurrah!” as another zombie became part of the brain-mush that now painted the room like lumpy pink paint. Made of brains.
“Nice and easy to blast ’em in small groups,” he said. He jabbed a thumb back over his shoulder. “Not so easy out yonder, though.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sam.
Major Muldoon cracked the barrels of the gun and slid in two new cartridges. “Over half the town’s been infected,” he said. “It’s like World War I out there, only with zombies and whatnot. Can’t move for the blighters!”
Sam looked past the major. A chorus of low moans drifted in from somewhere outside.
“We’re vastly outnumbered,” the major continued, “and it looks to me like the hungrier they get the more jolly well angry they become! They’ll be chasing us down like lions hunting zebra on the African plains.”
Phoebe’s hand shot up. “Which are we, lions or zebras?”
“The zebras,” replied the major.
Phoebe’s face fell. “Oh no!” she gasped. “Stripes make me look fat.”
“Emmie!” gasped Sam. “Emmie’s out there on her own.”
Arty’s face went even paler than usual, which meant it was very nearly invisible. “With a much more sizable contingent of the undead than she thought!”
“She was heading for the Town Hall,” Sam said. “We should go after her.”
“Jolly good idea,” said Major Muldoon. “It’s an easy place to fortify, heavy doors, high windows. You’ll be safe there.”
Arty’s eyes lit up. “Safe? Yes. Safe is good! I like safe! Let’s go!”
“Not so fast,” said Major Muldoon. “It’s a war zone out there. You won’t survive two minutes stomping about with those ruddy great feet of yours.”
Arty looked down. “What’s wrong with my feet?”
“What you need is some of this,” said the major. He waggled the thumb and pinkie of his right hand, then touched his nose twice with the index finger.
The others watched him carefully.
“And one of these,” Major Muldoon continued. He tickled the top of his head, then formed a crocodile shape with his fingers and snapped them together.
Arty leaned in close to Sam. “What’s he doing?”
“Having a mental breakdown,” Phoebe muttered.
“Hand signals!” the major explained. “So you don’t have to go bellowing to one another.”
“Aaah, right,” said Sam. “I thought you were having some kind of seizure.”
“You three make your advance on the Town Hall, quick smart,” the major urged. “I’ll hang back here and keep these blighters off your back, or my name isn’t Major Mushroom!”
“Er … but that isn’t your name,” said Sam.
“Isn’t it? Not to worry!” laughed the major. “Tallyho!” he cried, and Sam, Arty, and Phoebe ran off, with the blasts from the shotgun ringing loudly in their ears.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emmie’s grip tightened around the baseball bat until her knuckles turned white. She had her back pressed against the side of the half-pipe and was doing her best to keep out of sight. Not that it really mattered, though, because Jesse was shambling straight for her.
Well, there was no way she was going to let him eat her alive. Not today. Probably not tomorrow, either, although she might be up for being eaten alive on Tuesday, because nothing interesting ever happened on Tuesdays and it would help to pass the time.
Jesse’s flapping great feet shuffled through the grass. Emmie held her breath. This was it.
She jumped.
She screamed.
She swung.
The baseball bat crunched into Jesse’s stomach. He dropped to his knees, clutching his guts, and then toppled sideways onto the grass.
“What did you do that for?” he gasped.
“Aren’t you a zombie?” Emmie asked.
“No!”
Emmie stared at him, then gave him another sharp thwack with the bat, just in case.
“Ow! Cut it out!”
“Well, what were you giving it all that for, then?” Emmie demanded, letting her face relax into a zombielike state of doziness.
“That’s just my face!” Jesse snapped. He was telling the truth. They say the most dangerous people in the world are those who appear to be idiots but are secretly super smart. Jesse was a little bit like that—he looked like an idiot but he was, in fact, an idiot.
“Oh, sorry,” said Emmie,
helping him up. “You could probably get some sort of surgery.”
“For my stomach?” Jesse winced. “It’ll be fine in a minute.”
“Actually, I meant for your face,” Emmie said. Jesse’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Just, you know, so people don’t mistake you for a zombie,” Emmie explained. “I’m just thinking of you here.”
Jesse shook his head. “What a day,” he muttered. “Water balloons, baseball bats. What next?”
“Flesh-eating monsters, probably,” Emmie said.
Jesse shrugged. “Nah, they don’t seem to bother with me,” he said. He puffed out his broad chest. “Probably too scared.”
“Or they think you’re one of them,” Emmie snorted.
“Yeah, yeah. Shut it,” Jesse sneered, even though—deep, deep down—he was secretly quite hurt. Did he really look like a zombie? He hoped not. The last one he’d seen hadn’t even had a forehead.
He shrugged, because even more deep down he didn’t really care what Emmie thought. “I’m going back home,” he told her, then he about-faced and stomped off.
Emmie watched him until he was out of sight. Then she glanced across the park in the direction of the Town Hall. She could already hear the moans and groans of the living dead closing in from all directions. She was going to have to fight her way to safety. Unless …
She thought about Jesse, with his vacant expression and his shambling walk. She thought about what he’d said—that the zombies had left him alone.
With a splat, Emmie applied a layer of mud to her skin and messed up her clothes. She let out an experimental groan and shuffled a few unsteady paces forward.
A smile spread like warm jam across her face. “If you can’t beat ’em,” she said, “join ’em!”
* * *
