Sludgment Day

by John Kloepfer

  “Big whoop,” Zoe said. “You, like, want a prize or something?”

  “Is she always this pleasant?” Duplessis asked Zack.

  “Always…”

  Moments later, the geneticist stopped and opened a set of thick steel double doors, which led into a high-tech lab facility. The lab was fully equipped with super-fast computers and smooth black countertops with sinks and gas valves like a chemistry classroom. Zack pulled Rice over to a thick heating pipe running up the wall and tied his zombified friend up tight. Zack stared out the long window overlooking the driveway. The zombies were trashing the front of the house, smashing through the windows.

  “Now let me get this straight.” Duplessis pointed at Madison. “She’s the cure?”

  “She was,” Zack said. “I mean, she still is…”

  “She just needs to replenish,” Zoe chimed in.

  “I see.” Duplessis nodded, his mind racing.

  “And all we have left is this tiny little bit.” Zack handed him the vial.

  “We’ll have to try and clone the compound.”

  “You can do that?” Ozzie asked, keeping up on his crutches.

  “It may be difficult, but in theory, yes.” He ran his hands through his skunk-tail hair. “Then we’ll need a way to mass-distribute.”

  “Huh?” Zack said.

  “What do zombies like to eat more than brains?” he mused.

  “Nothing, really,” Zoe piped in.

  “Well, do a little brainstorming then … hah!” Duplessis walked over to Rice and studied his zombified face. Rice was fighting against the leash collar, crazy eyes bulging. Then Duplessis turned to them all. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

  “What a weirdo!” Madison and Zoe jinxed themselves when Duplessis left the room.

  “I kind of like him,” Ozzie said. “I mean for a guy who zombified everything.”

  “Come on, guys,” Zack said. “Let’s think.”

  “Okay,” Zoe started. “Zombies love flesh and brains. I can tell you, because when I was a zombie those were two very delicious-seeming things.”

  “So,” said Madison. “Whatever it is has to taste like flesh and brains.”

  “No,” Ozzie said. “It has to taste better than flesh and brains.”

  “But what tastes better than flesh and brains to a zombie?” Zack asked.

  “Nothing,” Zoe replied, stumped.

  Rice growled, chained to the wall. Man, Zack thought, I wish Rice were here. He’d definitely know.

  “Why don’t we just use actual brains and marinate them in the antidote first?” Zoe suggested.

  “Where are we going to get that many brains, though?” Zack asked her.

  “We can put the antidote on pretty much anything.” Ozzie thought out loud. “It just has to attract zombies more than we do.”

  “Like what?”

  “How about popcorn?” Madison said. “Everybody likes popcorn.”

  “Yeah,” Zack pondered. “But zombies don’t eat popcorn, Madison.”

  “Fine, whatever. I can’t think anymore,” Madison moaned. “My brain is fried.”

  There was a long pause. Zack looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

  “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “Madison, you’re a genius!”

  “Well, duh…,” she said with a flip of her long, blond ponytail.

  Zack began his hypothesis. “You said your brains were fried…” He turned to Madison. “What do you like better: chicken fingers or chicken à la king?”

  Madison shook her head. “You’re asking the wrong girl.”

  “My bad, I forgot.” Zack looked at his sister. “Zoe?”

  “Fingers,” she said.

  “And Ozzie,” he continued. “French fries or mashed potatoes?”

  “French fries,” Ozzie answered. “What’s your point?”

  “See?” Zack said. “Everything tastes better when it’s fried, right? So if we make the zombie junk food taste like fried brains, then…”

  “But what does fried brain even taste like?”

  “You guys are focusing on the wrong stuff,” Zack said, exasperated. “We need Duplessis … where’d that dude go?”

  Just then Duplessis reentered the laboratory. The mad scientist walked silently across the room with his hands clasped behind his back and a solemn expression on his face. Then he spoke: “Which would you like first? The good news or the not-so-good news?”

  CHAPTER

  “Good news first, please,” Zoe said biting her thumbnail.

  “There was just enough antidote to clone the serum.” Duplessis grinned. “We’ll have plenty more in just a short while.”

  “That’s great news!” Zack cheered.

  “What’s the bad news?” Ozzie asked warily.

  Duplessis gave them all a wry smile. “There is no bad news. I was just having a little fun. Hah! How did the brainstorming go?” He chuckled again, quite amused with himself.

  Zack smiled. “Can you make something that tastes like fried human brains?”

  “In theory, yes. But we’d need a sample of real human brain in order to match the flavor. So, unless one of you is ready to give up your cerebral cortex…”

  “Wait!” Zack unzipped Rice’s backpack and riffled around. Down at the very bottom, he felt the plastic baggie. He pulled out the leftover patty-shaped cross-section of the brain from Mr. Budington’s science classroom that they fed to their zombie teachers, all the way back in Phoenix. “How about this?”

  Duplessis took the brain sample and strode briskly out of the room, down a long corridor, and into the fast-food testing facility. He brought the brain slice to a stainless steel table with two Fryolators plugged into the wall. He dropped the brain in the sizzling hot oil and let it fry for a minute, then took it out. The vivisected brain looked almost like a BurgerDog patty. Duplessis brought the fried brain over to a fancy machine shaped like a coffeemaker and placed the specimen on a crystal lens, where the hot plate would have been. He hit a switch, and a laser beam scanned back and forth over the patty. “We just need to wait a minute for the biosensory readout to process the flavor.”

  “Oh.” Zack nodded his head, pretending to understand. “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later, a sample of the fried brain flavor was ready.

  Madison put Twinkles on the table, and Duplessis dropped a small blob of the artificial flavoring into a petri dish. Twinkles looked around nervously and then sniffed the clear, thick, fried-brain-flavored liquid.

  “Go on…” Madison encouraged the puppy.

  Zack waited with rapt anticipation as the tiny dog sniffed it again and then lapped it up.

  “How is it, Twinkles?” Madison asked her pup.

  “Arf!” The little dog licked his chops and wagged his tail happily.

  A short while later, the new batch of antidote and the first round of the fried-brain flavoring were ready.

  “What are we going to put it on?” Zack asked.

  “Popcorn, Zack,” Madison said. “I told you. It even looks like little brains.”

  “She might be onto something.” Duplessis’s eyes lit up. “Come with me. I have an idea.”

  Duplessis walked them through his research center to another warehouselike room. There was a huge metal cylinder with four stainless steel chutes sticking out from the circumference of the round metal vat. The kids stood behind the junk-food geneticist as he operated the controls. Soon, the popcorn started popping in the large industrial kettle and jiggled down the chutes. Another machine spritzed it with the antidote, then finally glazed it with the fried brain flavoring.

  While the first batch of the zombie treats finished up, Duplessis ushered them down the steps into the packaging room, where oversize bags of the zombie-corn were already being sealed and toted on the conveyer belts.

  “Now, just to be sure, we have to test it on a live specimen,” Duplessis said.

  “Rice!” Zack grabbed one of the popcorn bags, raced back through the corridors,
and burst into the laboratory, where Rice was still tied to the wall.

  Zoe, Madison, Ozzie, Twinkles, and Duplessis followed behind Zack as he carefully approached his ravenous pal. Rice looked awful, snarling and gurgling phlegm. Zack took a handful of the unzombification popcorn and sculpted a neat little pile of it on the floor. Once the antidotal snack chow was set, Zack moved a few yards to the side and sat down cross-legged, even with the pile.

  “Okay,” Zack called. “Unchain him.” He crossed his fingers as Duplessis took off Rice’s helmet and undid the leash.

  Zombie Rice waddled toward his best friend. His eyeballs drooped behind his glasses and his chicken-pox scabs oozed amber slime.

  “Braaaaiins!” he gurgled, snapping his teeth.

  “Zack, watch out!” Zoe screamed. “He’s gonna bite you! He doesn’t know you’re his friend!

  Rice lowered his jaws, ready to snack down on his best bud.

  Zack shrank back, tightening his biceps.

  As Rice’s nose neared Zack, the fried brain smell wafted up, catching his attention. He sniffed the air and grumbled, following the scent to the pile of popcorn on the floor.

  “Braaaaiins!” he rasped again.

  They all watched with excitement as Rice tottered to the popcorn, dropped to his knees, and plunged face-first into the pile, scarfing it up.

  Rice chewed the fried-brain-flavored morsels with his mouth open. Flecks of brain-corn flew from his pie-hole as he nibbled his undead fingertips and licked his clammy palms.

  “So grody.” Madison cringed.

  Zombie Rice glanced around with a crazed look on his face, breathing loudly through his mouth before collapsing on the floor.

  CHAPTER

  “Rice!” Zack crouched down and shook his buddy.

  Rice’s eyes popped open, and he smiled groggily. “Gotcha…”

  “You’re right, Rice.” Zack’s eyes lit with laughter as he helped his best friend to his feet. “You really did.”

  “Ew, Rice.” Zoe plugged her nose. “You’re, like, all smelly.”

  “Dude, I was a zombie!” Rice smiled and popped his collar. The slimy pock marks on his face were already drying up.

  “Welcome back, ninja warrior,” Ozzie said, bowing with respect. “We gotta get going though.”

  With Rice in tow, they went back to the snack manufacturing division and carried the big industrial-size bags of popcorn up to the laboratory.

  From the window, Zack could see an endless horde of zombies thronging into Duplessis’s estate.

  “This way.” Duplessis marched through the second floor to the balcony overlooking the entrance hall of his home. The senseless maniacs pillaged through the foyer, thrashing the furniture and tearing down the pictures from the walls. Duplessis’s winged piglet flapped and fluttered wildly, oinking in the birdcage.

  Zack ripped open a bag of brain bites and launched the kernels of antidote, showering the ransacking zombies now stomping up the twin spiral staircases to the landing.

  But the zombies didn’t go for the popcorn.

  “Oh no!” Madison cried. “It’s not working!”

  “But it worked on Rice…”

  “That’s because he’s Rice,” Zoe said. “He’ll eat anything!”

  Rice shrugged. “She’s probably right.”

  “Look!” Duplessis pointed as the zombies began to zero in on the popcorn treats. The undead maniacs dropped to the ground and gobbled up the popcorn with their disgusting, boil-covered tongues.

  As the zombies guzzled the popcorn, the horde began to collapse, one by one.

  Zack, Rice, Ozzie, Madison, Zoe, Twinkles, and Duplessis hustled downstairs through the unzombifying swarm to the front entrance of the estate. On the front porch, they flung open bags of popcorn over the rest of the zombie crowd until the last of the flesh-eating savages passed out.

  They gazed out at the great heap of twisted limbs and distended skulls and watched in utter silence as the cattle ranchers, meat packers, and food scientists regained their humanity.

  The repentant geneticist stared at his re-reanimated zombloyees, and a tear ran down his cheek. He looked at Zack and the rest of them graciously. “Thank you,” he said softly. “Thank you…”

  “You’re welcome,” Zack said. “But you have to cross your heart and hope to die that you’ll never genetically engineer another animal for the rest of your life.”

  Duplessis made an X over his breast pocket and mumbled something quietly to himself. “I promise,” he said.

  “And you have to apologize,” Madison said.

  “I’m sorry.” Duplessis frowned.

  “Not to us,” she said. “To them.” Madison pointed to the crowd of unzombified people standing bewildered in the driveway.

  Duplessis faced his former staff and projected his voice. “Sorry, everyone!”

  The people grumbled, rubbing their faces and staring at their surroundings. They still looked confused. “My thumb!” a grown man yelped. “It’s gone!”

  Duplessis turned back to the kids. “I’ll give them some time to recover.”

  “You’re in charge again,” Zack said, patting Duplessis on the back. “Don’t screw it up.” He slung a popcorn bag over his shoulder and walked down the stairs. “Come on, guys,” Zack said to the rest of the gang.

  The befuddled mass of formerly undead BurgerDog employees parted, allowing a path for the five heroic kids and their little dog, too.

  The sunset sky flamed red and orange as the Winnebago rolled up the mountain road. Zack sat in the front, while Ozzie drove. Rice stuck his head in between the seats. “You guys need to fill me in on what happened, you know.”

  “We will, Rice,” Zack said. “Don’t worry.”

  Behind the Winnebago, Zoe steered a giant eighteen-wheeler delivery truck up the narrow, spiraling road. Madison was petting Twinkles in the passenger seat. Honk-honk! Zoe pulled the cord to blow the truck’s horn.

  When they pulled back up to the mansion, Duplessis was waiting with hundreds of popcorn bags ready to go. The whole gang hopped out and loaded them into the back of their rides.

  “Where will you go now?” Duplessis asked Zack as they prepared to leave.

  “Phoenix, Arizona.” Zack handed him a little pad of paper from Rice’s backpack. “Write down your number. We’ll need more of this eventually.”

  Duplessis scribbled down his contact info and looked up. “What are you going to do in Phoenix?”

  “We’re gonna get our families back.”

  CHAPTER

  The stars shone brightly in the pitch-dark sky as they approached Phoenix with a massive delivery of unzombifying popcorn. In front of them, Twinkles hung his head out the passenger window of the eighteen-wheeler.

  “Tuesday night.” Zack sighed to himself.

  This time last week, he’d been in bed, lights out, trying to will himself to sleep. Zoe was in her room doing Zoe things. Mom and Dad were downstairs doing Mom-and-Dad things. He couldn’t wait to return his parents to their normal form. He liked normal. Normal was good.

  Next to him Ozzie stared out the windshield with a blank look on his face.

  Zack looked over from the passenger seat. “You okay, man?”

  “Huh?” Ozzie shook the daydream out of his head. “I was just thinkin’, everything isn’t just going to be fine now that we have all this popcorn or whatever…”

  “It isn’t…?” Zack asked. “Why not?”

  “No, I mean, like, my dad,” Ozzie continued. “Just because we unzombify him doesn’t mean he’s gonna grow another arm, you know?”

  “That’s true…,” Zack said, trailing off. He hadn’t even thought about that. He was so glad that his zombified parents were safe, locked inside the bank vault with all of their body parts intact.

  “Don’t worry, Oz,” Rice said from the backseat. “Once we find my dad, he can give your dad a new arm.”

  “How’s he gonna do that?” Ozzie scoffed.

  “He’s a pros
thetic surgeon,” Rice said, chewing something with his mouth full.

  “Rice, what are you eating?” Zack asked.

  “These things are actually pretty tasty,” Rice said, popping a fistful of the zombie popcorn into his mouth.

  “Dude, quit eating those.” Zack scolded his pal. “It’s for the zombies.”

  Just then, Zoe’s voice crackled over the radio static. “Hey, little bro,” she said. “Looks like we’ve got some company up ahead.”

  Ozzie had rigged one of the security guard radios to the dashboard and tuned into the same broadband frequency as the one Zoe and Madison kept on the truck’s two-way.

  A military roadblock obstructed the interstate in front of them, and they slowed down. Two soldiers walked toward them with their palms out. One of them marched to the semi, and Zoe poked her head through the open driver’s-side window. The other one approached the boys in the Winnebago. The big broad-shouldered soldier peered inside. “Ozzie?”

  Zack thought he looked familiar. If it wasn’t for the three-day beard, he would have looked just like…

  “Sergeant Patrick?” Ozzie asked.

  “Ozzie Briggs,” Sgt. Patrick said with a wide smile. “The colonel’s gonna be mighty glad to see you.”

  “My dad’s a zombie…”

  “Yeah,” Rice said to the Sergeant. “And you’re supposed to be a zombie, too.”

  “Not me,” Patrick replied, gazing off to retell the tale. “After the base went into lockdown, I was trapped outside, dodging zombies left and right. I looked up to the control room, the only room that can undo emergency shutdown, and then I see that idiot kid in the soccer uniform you were with—”

  “NotGreg?” Rice suggested, listening with rapt attention.

  “Yeah, Greg,” Sergeant Patrick continued. “I told him to duck down so I could fire my gun, break the glass, and tell him how to disengage the lockdown protocol. He did everything I said, mostly right. Then I raced back to the medic unit where they kept the blood samples from that Madalyn girl.”