The Zero Degree Zombie Zone

by Patrik Henry Bass

  “Yeah, right!” I reply. Lame, I know. I’ve always got tons of good comebacks right on the tip of my tongue — until I actually have to say them, and then they all disappear into thin air. Instead I wind up saying something lame, or not saying anything at all, and looking even more like an idiot than I did before.

  “ ‘Yeah, right?’ That the best you can do?” Keisha snorts. “Please, my baby brother’s got more lip than that, and he’s barely two!”

  “Start feeling the heat, can’t beat Tariq!” her cousin offers, grinning like he’s just said something really deep. Yay, so you can rhyme, I do it all the time, I think. But of course I can’t manage to say it, and his smile just gets wider.

  “Lay off me, Keisha,” I tell her, and the way she’s grinning you’d think she was a big old cat and I was a wounded bird that just fluttered down in front of her. “What’s so funny?”

  “You,” she says through that smirk. “You’re funny. You’re in so deep, and down so bad, you don’t even know it. You just keep talking and acting like it’s nothing, but I can hear your knees shaking from here.”

  “I’m not scared of you or Tariq,” I tell her, slamming my math book shut and standing to face her.

  Big mistake.

  “Bakari, is there a problem?” Of course Mrs. Crump heard my book closing and looked back — and now here I am, out of my seat, my book shut on my desk. While Keisha and Tariq have their heads bent over their textbooks like good little students.

  “Bakari was saying something under his breath,” Keisha reports, looking up like it’s the first time. “I didn’t hear what, exactly, but it looked like he was getting all worked up about something. Then he just slammed his book and jumped up from his seat.” Her eyebrows raise, and her mouth forms a little O of surprise — or sympathy. “Are you okay, Bakari?” Then a little smirk flickers over her face. “How are your knees?”

  “I’m good,” I tell her, as sharp as I can. Then I turn back to Mrs. Crump. “I’m fine, ma’am, thank you. Just something poked my leg and startled me. It was probably my pencil, or maybe there’s a rough spot under my desk.” I rub at my leg to emphasize it. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Mrs. Crump studies me for a second, then nods slowly. “Yes, well, return to your seat, please. Thank you. Now, where were we?”

  Somebody — Faronda, I think — calls out the page number, and we return to the exciting world of integers and rays and diameters. Whew!

  I toss an angry stare toward Keisha and Tariq and scowl as she turns away, concentrating.

  And that’s when I see it.

  There’s a ring on Keisha’s left thumb. A big, heavy ring I’ve never seen her wear before. It’s blocky and rough, like whoever made it didn’t have proper training or tools or something. It’s blue, or at least bluish, though from here it looks like there’s some white and silver as well.

  It looks like it could’ve been carved from ice.

  “That’s it,” I mutter to myself. “That’s the ring!”

  “The ring?” It takes Wardell a second to catch up. “Hold on, you mean that Zenon guy’s ring? The one you need to give him to stop a real-life zombie invasion? Let’s get to it, then!”

  “Yeah? How, exactly?” I look at him, then at Keisha and Tariq, then at Mrs. Crump. Too much distance between me and Keisha, and not enough between us and Mrs. Crump. There isn’t a lot I can do from here.

  Wardell’s getting that, too, but he just shrugs. “So get in closer,” he offers.

  Again, a lot easier said than done. I have no idea how Keisha wound up with that ring, but it doesn’t look like she wants to get rid of it any time soon. Not to mention she’s about the last person I want to be anywhere near.

  And just how did she get that ring?

  I try to lose myself in fractions. But between this whole ring thing and the hall monitor stuff, I’m having a hard time concentrating. When the lunch bell rings I think it’s about the sweetest sound I ever heard.

  “All right, class, line up for lunch!” Mrs. Crump calls out. There’s a mass of usual noise as everyone slams their books shut, tosses them back inside their desks, scrapes their chairs back, and stampedes toward the door. “Nice neat lines!” she reminds us, just like a normal day, and we slow down and break into lines, boys and girls. Tariq’s line leader for the boys, of course. Keisha’s line leader for the girls, of course. They take their places right by the door, heads up like they’re royalty or something, and everyone pushes and shoves to get as close behind them as possible. Except for me. I hang back near the end of the line, Wardell right behind me. No sense asking for extra trouble.

  Not that it helps any, of course. “Off to the lunchroom, on the double,” Mrs. Crump tells us, opening the door and ushering us out, but she doesn’t go with us. She never does. Most of the teachers eat at their desks, or in the teacher’s lounge, with one or two keeping an eye on the cafeteria alongside the actual lunch ladies. Mrs. Crump isn’t one of them. Wardell said that he heard from Moses that Mrs. Crump stops off at the teacher’s lounge, then sits at her desk. I bet she sighs with relief the minute we’re out of sight and she can read a magazine or eat a doughnut or whatever it is teachers do when their students are gone.

  Unfortunately, that also means we don’t have an adult with us between the classroom and the cafeteria. Which is why Keisha and Tariq can let most of the class rush past them down the hall and linger to tease me with no one around to stop them.

  And that’s exactly what they do.

  “Ready to give up?” Keisha says, getting right up in my face. She’s a bit shorter than I am, not counting all that hair, but she pops up on her tippy-toes so her eyes are even with mine. “You ain’t gonna win, so you might as well save yourself some humiliation and quit now.”

  I just stare back at her, until I realize she’s actually expecting a reply. “Uh, I can’t,” I finally manage to mutter, my fingers going to Granddad’s marble for strength and support. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry?” she practically screeches at me. “Sorry? Oh, you’re gonna be sorry, all right!” Her tone goes soft and her scowl changes to a smile. For a second she’s almost nice. “Come on, Bakari, why’re you doing this? Everybody knows Tariq’s gonna mop the floor with you.” Tariq, who’s been standing back out of the way and letting his cousin do all the talking — like usual — nods. It’s his smug, matter-of-fact face, like, “Yep, you know she’s right, nothing you can do about it.” Tariq isn’t even a bully. He just assumes he should get everything he wants, and ignores anyone who tells him otherwise. And of course he’s got Keisha around to make it all happen.

  She’s still talking at me, still in super-friendly mode like we’re cool. She says, “There’s really no reason to go through all of this, is there? You can just concede the race, take your name off the sign-up sheet, and that’ll be that. Tariq gets to be hall monitor again, and you” — she actually reaches up and pats my hair like my great-aunt Florence — “you get to go back to your nice, quiet life again.”

  Which sounds good, honestly. I didn’t want to be hall monitor in the first place, and I still don’t. Besides, I’ve got this whole zombie thing to figure out. I’d be happy to surrender the hall monitor race and let Tariq have it.

  The only problem is, I can’t.

  See, conceding means I actually have to do something. And doing things isn’t really my specialty. I’m an ideas guy, always thinking, always asking questions (at least in my head), always trying to figure stuff out, always imagining.

  The actual doing? Not so much.

  I tend to freeze up when I have to make decisions. Always have. So with Keisha telling me I should quit — I’d like to, I really would. But I can’t. It’s actually easier for me to keep going and to lose the election than it is for me to step out of the race right now.

  Which, I know, is pretty lame of me. I know that. There just isn’t much I can do about it.

  That’s why I wind up shaking my head to Keisha’s offer.

>   Which is why she shoves me.

  “Dumb move, little loser boy!” Her nicey-nice face vanishes in an instant, like somebody just scrubbed it away, and there’s her normal Keisha glare in its place. “You gonna get ground beneath Tariq’s heel!” And she shoves me a second time, hard, with both hands.

  It’s pure reflex that I reach out with my free hand — the one not clutching Granddad’s marble — and grab her arm as I stumble and fall.

  Which means she falls right on top of me.

  And, since Tariq is directly behind me at the moment, when I fall backward I slam into him, and he topples over as well.

  Wardell falls with us. I’m not entirely sure how, since he was behind Keisha and she fell toward me and away from him. But then it’s Wardell. He’s entirely capable of tripping himself by accident. All alone. While sitting down. No joke, I’ve seen it happen.

  Anyway, there we all are on the floor, all four of us. There’s a lot of pushing and shoving and elbowing going on as we each try to get free and get some space and stand back up.

  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Tariq is the first back on his feet.

  I happen to be next, which is a surprise, even to me.

  Then Keisha pops up like a jack-in-the-box, bouncing and swaying and getting in my face again. “You think you can just knock me down?” she practically spits. “Yeah? Is that what you think?”

  “You pushed me,” I point out, but she’s not hearing any of that. She’s too busy waving her hand in my face, her bare fingers flicking back and forth before my eyes.

  Wait a second — bare fingers?

  I look again. Yep, five fingers, nothing but skin up to the paint-and-jewel-encrusted nails.

  What happened to the ring?

  I look around, checking the floor right where we were — and there it is, a glint of ice off to one side by some lockers, like some kid dropped an ice cube on his way to class. Only I know better. I hurry over and scoop it up. It’s a lot heavier than it looks, a lot heavier than any normal ice, and it’s freezing, numbing my fingers just from holding it. Keisha is so full of heat it’s a wonder she didn’t melt this ring, but, hey, I’ve got it! Once I figure out how to get it back to Zenon I can return it and the world won’t have to worry about an ice zombie invasion. Hooray!

  I drop the ring into my pocket — and freeze.

  Because there wasn’t a clink.

  And ice colliding with Granddad’s marble should have made a loud clink.

  I shove my hand back into my pocket, but other than the ring, the rubber band, and the finger puppet, there’s nothing there.

  Nothing.

  It can’t have gone far, I tell myself quickly, frantically searching the area. It has to be — aha! Something catches the light across the hall, next to another locker. Something light-colored, gray maybe, and possibly round.

  Yes!

  Just as I’m starting toward it, though, Keisha gets in my way again. “I should get you written up,” she snaps, “pushing a girl like that. What’s the matter with you?”

  “What? I didn’t push you — you pushed me.” I go to step past her, and she slides over to block me again. “Look, I won’t say anything,” I promise, “if you just get out of my way and leave me alone.” I catch Wardell’s eye and then glance over toward the marble. Come on, best friend, figure out what I’m trying to tell you, I think furiously.

  I almost leap toward the sky when he looks over, sees the marble, starts, then glances back at me and nods. And ambles in that direction.

  Yes!

  And then Tariq sidles right past him, just slips by Wardell like he’s moving in slow motion — which, admittedly, he sort of is — and crouches down to pick up the small, shiny thing that’s captured our attention.

  “A marble,” Tariq says, holding it up to see it more clearly. “Sweet.”

  “Tariq —” I start as he straightens up, clutching my marble in one big hand. But I’m rudely interrupted. Again.

  “Don’t even try it,” Keisha warns me. “Anything you gotta say to him, you can say to me.”

  “I need —” I try again, but she cuts me off.

  “You need?” she snorts in my face. “What you need don’t enter into it! It’s all about what we need. And right now” — she flips her head, making her tall hair wave dangerously, before turning her back on me — “what we need is lunch.”

  She stomps off, Tariq right behind her, still admiring his new find. Leaving me and Wardell out in the hall, alone.

  “Sorry,” he tells me once they’re gone. “I saw it on the ground and went for it, but Tariq was faster.”

  “I know.” I sigh. “Well, at least I got this.” I hold up the ring. It catches the light from the side windows almost like a prism, sending a cascade of color across the far wall. “Now I just need to figure out how to get it back to Zenon and it’s all good.”

  Except I can’t help but feel like that isn’t going to work. Like without that marble I’ve got problems I don’t even know about yet. Like trading it for the ring was a bad trade all around, but especially for me.

  I need to get that marble back.

  I just wish I knew how.

  “Come on, before all the good brownies are gone,” Wardell begs, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the cafeteria. “We can figure out how to get the marble back and return the ring to that Zero guy after lunch.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I hang my head. I am sort of hungry under all the shaking in my body. “Let’s go.”

  Maybe, I think as we start down the hall again, I can convince Tariq to trade me the marble for something else.

  I wonder how he feels about string cheese.

  Hey, you gonna eat that?”

  I glance up from playing with my cold fish stick. Wardell’s already got three crammed into his mouth and two more clutched in one hand, but he’s still eyeing mine.

  “Nah, go for it.” I push the lunch tray toward him.

  “Sweet, thanks!” He immediately grabs up the rest of my food. Fine by me. I’m not feeling real hungry anyway. I nibbled what I could, but between the hall monitor thing, the zombie and ring thing, and now the marble thing, most of my appetite is shot. I do manage to keep a death grip on my brownie, though, and ignore Wardell’s puppy-dog eyes. It’s not like he hasn’t had two already!

  “Dude, I gotta get that marble back,” I tell him for the hundredth time. Tariq and Keisha are sitting on the other end of the fourth-grade table, surrounded by half our class, telling stories and laughing like this is the best party ever. Tariq’s not even holding the marble, near as I can tell — looks like he’s got a brownie in the hand he’s waving around, and a bottle of juice in the other. I bet he just looked at Granddad’s marble for a few seconds, then stuck it in his coat pocket and forgot about it. Or maybe he got bored and tossed it — my heart seizes for a second, but I don’t really buy that one. He’d hold on to it, just in case he wanted it later. Besides, it’s shiny, and Tariq likes shiny things, like gold medals.

  “Whuddygonnado?” That’s the best Wardell can manage around his mouthful of food. Good thing I’m sitting across from him — the spray doesn’t quite make it to my side of the table.

  I take a bite of brownie. “I wish I knew.”

  I’m just swallowing the bite when the cafeteria doors slam open — and two long shadows stretch all the way across the room.

  I glance over, and my heart about stops again.

  The two standing in the doorway are definitely not elementary school students — not unless we’ve got some new exchange program for giants that nobody told me about. They’ve got to be over seven feet tall, their heads nearly scraping the door frame above them. They’re not teachers, either. Not unless teachers are now going around wearing old rags that were probably clothes once, maybe a decade ago.

  And then there’s the whole blue-white skin thing. And the glazed-over, milky eyes. And the slack jaws. And the arms out, hands vaguely grasping air as they shamble into the room.


  Uh-oh! Ice zombies! A pair of them, from Zenon’s Zero Degree Zombie Zone.

  But what’re they doing here?

  Ice zombies like brownies?

  Really, it’s no surprise at all that the first people to react are Tariq and Keisha. “Hi, can we help you?” Keisha asks in her fake, “Hello grown-up, I’m incredibly sweet and polite” voice as she bounces over. Tariq’s right behind her, though I can see he’s frowning as he eyes the frozen pair.

  The ice zombies look down at them — not a lot of people in this school can look down on Tariq like that, and I have to admit I sort of enjoy it — and the one on the left opens his mouth. His teeth, amazingly, are perfect, and sparkle like, well, ice.

  “Urrr!” he groans. And takes a single lurching step toward Keisha.

  She backs up. “Sir?” she tries again. “Are you all right? Do you need some help? Are you feeling sick? Did you want to sit down?” She elbows her cousin, who finally says something.

  “Yo, man, you want some juice or something?” Thank you, Tariq, that was very deep.

  “Gaaah!” the one on the right replies. And stumbles toward Tariq. Who backsteps fast. I think he shivers a little, too, but I can’t be sure from here.

  “Maybe we should get the school nurse,” Keisha offers. The zombie on the left reaches for her, but she sidesteps easily. “You really don’t look good.”

  “Raaah!” he replies, trying for her again. I think all her politeness has turned him off. He opens his mouth wide, his teeth gleaming, and then he lunges, trying to bite down on her shoulder or arm.

  “Hey!” All that fake politeness vanishes like she threw a switch — I still don’t know how she does that. “What was that, salmon breath?” she snaps instead. Ah, the real Keisha has returned. “You just try to take a bite out of me? I don’t think so!”

  The other one goes for Tariq, who easily evades the ice zombie’s clumsy attempts. “What’s up with that?” I hear him mutter. “Dude’s like ice. And bitey!”