“Madison,” said Zack.
“Who cares,” said Rice. “What happened next?”
“Well, Greg and I unzombified Private Michaels, and from there we made it to the hangar where the rest of the survivors were quarantined. After rounding up all the humans, we decided to head northbound to Phoenix. But just after we hit the road, this one-armed zombie staggered in front of my Jeep.”
“My dad!” Ozzie’s voice rose with excitement.
“Yep, Colonel Briggs. So I pulled over and gave him the last sample I had. That was four days ago.”
“Is he here?” Ozzie asked.
Sergeant Patrick pointed up the road. “Take that first exit into downtown. There’s a command post a few blocks in. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Zack tossed him a bag of the unzombifying popcorn.
“What’s this?” The Sergeant’s eyes widened at the bag. “I love caramel corn!”
“Zombie-corn.” Zack smiled. “Not for eating … for feeding.”
They led the eighteen-wheeler into downtown Phoenix and stopped at a military-style base camp in the center of their hometown. Rows of camouflaged tents lined the outside of the county hospital.
Inside one of the tents, tables were set up with radio equipment and portable electronics gear. A large man with one arm leaned on one of the tables with his back to them, speaking into a radio receiver.
“What do you mean, they’re all coming? Well, stop them, that’s what you’re there for!” The man paused. “What do you mean there’s too many?”
“Dad!” Ozzie shouted and ran to the colonel, throwing his arms around his father’s waist. The colonel stood up and looked down, startled by the appearance of his only son.
“I’ll call you back…” The colonel dropped the phone, picked Ozzie up with one arm, and spun him around. “What happened to your leg?” he said, setting Ozzie down.
“I broke it,” Ozzie said. “But I’m okay.”
All of a sudden, a surprisingly young-looking soldier marched over to the colonel. “Sir, we’re receiving reports all around the city, all saying the same thing: The zombies are doubling back on us, sir!”
Colonel Briggs scratched his head, nostrils flaring. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Zack studied the smallish soldier for a moment and then crinkled his eyebrows. “Greg?” he said, nudging his sister. Zoe and Madison gazed at Greg Bansal-Jones with amazement.
“Hey, Greg,” Madison said.
Greg looked at Zoe, Zack, Madison, and Rice blankly. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Uh, yeah?” Zoe said. “We have, like, all the same classes together, dummy.”
“I’m sorry, miss,” Greg said. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m confused,” Rice said. “Is he NotGreg still, or Greg again?”
In a matter of days, Greg Bansal-Jones had transformed from a world-class middle school bully into a hideous zombie freak, then into an unzombified dummy with amnesia who only responded to NotGreg. The amnesia remained, but now it seemed NotGreg was a dedicated, obedient soldier.
“I don’t know,” Zack said. “I’m as confused as you are.”
“Sir?” Greg asked for the colonel’s attention. “What should we do?”
“How much ginkgo do we have left?” Colonel Briggs asked.
“Not enough, sir,” Greg said.
“Ammunition?”
Greg shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
“What’s going on, Dad?” Ozzie asked.
The colonel sighed a hopeless sigh. “It’s not looking too good right now, son.”
Zack’s eyes widened as he realized why the zombies were coming back. “The truck,” he said. “It’s filled with zombie snacks!”
The colonel squinted at Zack and furrowed his forehead.
“We’ve got to spread the popcorn around the city,” Zack said. “Like in a big circle.”
“Like a freakin’ forcefield!” Rice erupted with excitement.
Colonel Briggs looked skeptical.
“He’s right, dad,” Ozzie said. “We have a truck full of popcorn doused in the antidote.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” The colonel turned to Greg. “Call all mobile units back to the base to pick up the package.” He turned to Zack. “How much do we have?”
“A lot.” Zack smiled.
As the mobile units dispersed to sprinkle the unzombifying agent around the city’s perimeter, Rice chuckled to himself and looked at Zack.
“What’s so funny?”
“Operation: Scatterbrains,” Rice said with a smirk.
“You’re so corny,” Zack told his buddy, laughing as he said it.
Just then, a large man wearing glasses and a doctor’s smock jogged out of the front entrance of the hospital. “Colonel Briggs!” he yelled. “We’ve got problems, sir!”
“Yes, doctor,” the colonel said.
“We’ve done everything we can, but our ginkgo supply is officially gone, and we’ve got zombies waking up from sedation.”
“Dad?” Rice gasped and ran over to his father, giving him a great big bear hug.
“Johnston?” A lone tear trickled from Dr. Rice’s eye. “I thought I’d never see you again…”
“Is Mom okay?” Rice asked.
“She’s inside.”
“Hey, Dr. Rice.” Zack waved and handed his best buddy’s dad a bag of popcorn.
“Zack!” Rice’s dad greeted his son’s BFF. “What’s this?” he asked, looking at the popcorn.
“It’s the antidote, Pop!” Rice explained. “Just feed it to the zombies, and they’ll turn back into humans.”
Dr. Rice opened up the bag and took a whiff. “Smells like brains,” he said matter-of-factly.
“That was Madison’s idea,” Rice told him.
Dr. Rice nodded approvingly at Madison.
“Excuse me, Dr. Rice,” Madison said. “You don’t happen to know if my parents are alive, do you?”
“What are their names?” Dr. Rice asked.
“Frank and Julie Miller.”
“Frank and Julie Miller,” Rice’s dad mumbled to himself. “We saw them last Friday night at the parent-teacher conferences. “
“So they’re here?” Madison asked excitedly.
“No,” he said. “I’m afraid the last time we saw them, your father was trying to bite into my wife’s cranium,” Dr. Rice told her apologetically. “Had to give him the old one-two.” Rice’s dad put up his dukes like an old-school boxer.
“Oh.” Madison looked down, dejectedly.
“Don’t worry, Madison,” Zack said. “We’ll go unzombify everyone at school after we get our mom and dad from the bank.”
“Good idea, little bro,” Zoe said. “Come on.” She and Madison went outside and grabbed a few bags of the popcorn.
“You comin’, Rice?” Zack asked.
“Not right now,” Rice said. “I’m gonna go say whatsup to my mom.”
“Cool,” Zack said. “We’ll be back in a little while.”
“I know you will, dude,” Rice said. He and Zack clasped hands, and Rice brought Zack in for a full-on man hug. “Thanks for, you know, saving my life, dude.”
“Anytime, buddy!” Zack said, patting him on the back.
As Zack, Zoe, Madison, and Twinkles walked out of the hospital, UnNotGreg Bansal-Jones approached them. “I don’t know who you guys are,” the amnesiac ex-bully said, saluting them. “But if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have made it. So thanks.” Then he marched off.
“Looks like you knocked some sense into him, Zack,” said Madison, smiling.
“Guess so,” Zack said, as they passed the command center. Ozzie leaned over a foldout table, studying a large map of the area, while the colonel directed Operation: Scatterbrains on the military radio.
“Later, Oz!” Zoe called to their friend.
Ozzie looked up. “Where are you guys going?”
“To get our parents,” Mad
ison said. “We’ll be back.”
“Cool,” Ozzie said. He stood up tall and gave all four of them a formal salute.
“Get over here,” Zack said, walking to Ozzie. He smiled and slapped him five.
Madison and Zoe came over, too. “See you in a bit, Oz,” Madison said, giving Ozzie a friendly hug.
“Just don’t get bit,” said Ozzie, who now went to hug Zoe farewell, too.
But Zoe just stood there, holding out her fist.
“I’m not a hugger,” she said. Ozzie laughed and bumped her fist.
“Later, buddy!” Zack waved good-bye for now as they strolled back to the Winnebago. Twinkles trotted at their heels.
“You guys ready?” asked Zack back in the RV.
Zoe revved the engine. “Look who you’re askin’…”
The beat-up Winnebago rattled noisily. “Ready, Mad?”
“Ready, Freddy,” Madison said.
“Arf!” Twinkles barked.
With that, they drove off down the dark Phoenix street.
And all was well.
Well … almost.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Sara Shandler, Josh Bank, Rachel Abrams, Elise Howard, Katie Schwartz, and Lucy Keating, without whose sound zombie-chasing advice these books would not have been possible.
—J. K.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN KLOEPFER began his writing career at five years old with a one-sentence short story: “And then one day the monsters came.” He lives in New York City, where he is preparing for a massive zombie invasion.
STEVE WOLFHARD lives in Toronto, Canada, with a fat cat named Haircut. The first zombie movie Steve ever saw was Return of the Living Dead, and it still scares the crud out of him.
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CREDITS
Cover art by Steve Wolfhard
COPYRIGHT
The Zombie Chasers: Sludgment Day
Copyright © 2011 by Alloy Entertainment and John Kloepfer
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kloepfer, John.
Sludgment day / by John Kloepfer ; illustrated by Steve Wolfhard. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The zombie chasers ; 3)
ISBN 978-0-06-210218-8
EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062102188
[1. Zombies—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Wolfhard, Steve, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.K8646SI 2012 2011022930
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
* * *
12 13 14 15 16 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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