They sprinted away from the zombie mob to the other side of the river, stopping to catch their breath beneath two towering brass statues of colonists riding horseback. Ahead of them, the road forked around a massive white building surrounded by gigantic pillars.
“The White House…,” Rice said with awe in his voice.
“Actually, that’s the Lincoln Memorial,” Ozzie corrected. “Haven’t you guys ever been to Washington?”
“We live in Arizona, dude,” Zack said.
“The White House isn’t that much farther,” Ozzie told them, and they took off around the back of the Lincoln Memorial into the tree-lined park.
“Hey,” Rice called. “Wait up!”
Ozzie was running ahead of them, too fast. Zack hustled, trying to keep an eye on the one kid he did not want to lose track of.
Suddenly, a slime-smothered ghoul tottered out from behind a tree trunk. Zack dodged its flailing arm, trying to see through the downpour.
And just like that, Ozzie was gone.
“Ozzie!” Zoe yelled in the pelting rain.
Zack heard something howl like a wolf caught in a bear trap. Ozzie? Zack sprinted in the direction of the agonized noise. Up ahead, Ozzie was rolling in the mud, grasping his leg below the knee with both hands.
“AHHHHHH!” Ozzie wailed. His ankle was stuck in a scraggle of exposed tree roots. “My leg!”
“You okay, man?” Zack shouted, pulling Ozzie’s foot out of the hole. Ozzie yowled, gasping for breath, as the rainfall battered them.
“Ah, man,” Rice said, catching up. “This is worse than when you forget to turn off injuries in Madden.”
A zombie mailman staggered out from behind a nearby tree, slathered in slime. He bellowed a tortured moan, shambling toward them, going postal.
“We have to get Ozzie out of here,” Zoe warned.
A lightning bolt split the sky, and Zack caught a snapshot of the scene around them. An endless rally of zombified citizens closed in on all sides. Mud-covered savages crisscrossed in the light and then disappeared in a flash of shadow. The storm rumbled and popped with a furious burst of rain.
“To the Lincoln dude!” Zoe pointed through the trees to the memorial.
Zack and Zoe carried Ozzie across a roadway, away from the zombie onrush and up the short, wide steps between two gargantuan pillars. Under the shelter, they placed Ozzie on the cold marble and stared down at their wounded ninja soldier.
Ozzie pulled up his pant leg and grunted. It wasn’t pretty. The shinbone was visibly cracked above his ankle, bulging under the skin.
“Dude,” Rice said sorrowfully. “Your leg is busted!” He poked at it with his finger. Ozzie howled again.
“Rice, give me those binoculars,” Zack ordered.
Rice dug around in his pack, plucked out the pair of binoculars, and handed them to Zack, who peered through the magnifying lenses.
“What do you see?” Ozzie asked, wincing, half in shock.
Zack saw the Reflecting Pool, tinted green, spilling over with floating zombies, pruned and bloated. The tree-lined parkway was roiling with rain-soaked, brain-hungry fiends.
“A ton of zombies,” Zack responded. “And, like, this giant spiky thing at the other end of a pond.”
“Okay.” Ozzie gasped. “That’s the Washington Monument. You guys are gonna follow the pool and make a left at the big spike thing.”
“What are you talking about ‘you guys’?” Rice asked.
“Then go straight, all the way down, until you hit the White House,” Ozzie went on, ignoring him.
“You’re not coming?” asked Zoe.
“How?” Ozzie squeezed his broken leg. “I can’t walk.”
“Maybe we could just go real slow and the zombies wouldn’t know we’re not zombies.” Rice staggered forward, his arms outstretched, doing a remarkably good zombie impersonation.
“I’m useless,” Ozzie said. “Deadweight. Leave me here.”
“No way, dude,” Rice said. “We’re not leaving you behind!”
The rain poured in buckets off the roof of the Lincoln Memorial. Zack paced back and forth nibbling his thumbnail.
“It’s for the best,” Ozzie said.
“I’m really good at three-legged races,” Zoe blurted.
“Thanks, Zoe,” Zack said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Duh,” Zoe retorted. “Just tie his bad leg to one of my good legs.”
“Think you can do that, Ozzie?” Rice asked.
“It’s worth a shot…,” Ozzie said, gnashing his teeth.
Zack and Rice helped Ozzie stand up and balance on his good foot. Zoe stood directly next to him, putting her good leg against his bad one. Zack wrapped the three-legged racers with the last of their duct tape and chucked away the empty roll.
They stood now, the four of them on seven legs, under the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln, sitting on his oversized throne.
Zack looked out over the zombie-ridden capital of the zombie-infested USA, and it dawned on him that this was not just about them anymore. It wasn’t just about Madison, and it wasn’t just about their moms or their dads or their puppies or their friends. A fist-sized knot tightened in his chest.
This was about everyone.
CHAPTER 18
It was raining cats and BurgerDogs.
Zoe and Ozzie hobbled down the marble steps. Zack and Rice raised their weapons and moved slowly, flanking the three-legged racers. Ozzie shouted, “Ow!” with every other step they took as they made their way down to the Reflecting Pool.
Everything looked black and gray in the thunderstorm’s dusk. Bloated bodies of puffy, waterlogged flesh floated facedown in the pelting rain. Sopping-wet zombies lurched out of the park’s forest. A narrow zombie gauntlet formed between the treacherous woodland and the stone ledge of the long rectangular pool.
They moved toward the Washington Monument as quickly as Zoe and Ozzie could hobble. The rain beat fast with the pace of Zack’s pulse as they stalked along through the zombie maelstrom.
“Zack, look out!” Rice called.
A sludge-drenched madman doddered out of the woods. Zack reeled around and swung his bat, clubbing the zombie with a mighty wallop. KERSPLAT! The ill-willed beast fell flat in the muck. Zack grunted.
Lightning lit the sky for a full two seconds. Up ahead, the pointed ivory monument cast a shadow across the green, like a dagger pointing toward their final destination. The most famous house in America was no more than a few football fields away.
“The White House…,” Rice said again with the awestruck tone in his voice.
The landscape darkened, and thunder popped like a fireworks finale.
Zack gazed through the binoculars. Hundreds and hundreds of undead citizens prowled across the White House Rose Garden. Muck-covered politicians shambled in the flashing darkness. Senators plodded through the sludge side by side with homeless bag ladies, and evil-eyed children tottered beside escaped zombie prisoners in orange jumpsuits.
The sewer grates off the curb were plugged with thick black gunk and debris, causing the roadway to flood. Insects and rats’ tails coated the surface of the water—a real witch’s brew of stink and filth. Hot dogs and eyeballs bobbed in the slow current of the contaminated moat they now had no choice but to cross.
“Can we do this?” Rice shouted over the rain’s loud splatter.
“We’re gonna have to, man!” Zack turned to Ozzie and his sister. “How are you guys doing?”
“He’s a really bad partner,” Zoe said. “But we’ll be okay.”
Zack hiked up his pant legs and gripped his bat firmly. Rice walked softly, carrying a big field hockey stick. Ozzie growled, wincing with every step Zoe took, as they waded across the street brimming with diseased slop.
A well-dressed gang of zombified politicos tottered in tattered sport coats across the South Lawn of the White House. A zombified congressman and a Senate page lurched toward them, waving their mutilated arms. Shredded
Oxford sleeves dangled from their elbows, dribbling ooze.
Rice clobbered the lowly intern, and Zack belted the politician in his legislative noggin.
Zoe trudged along through the puddles of muck, dragging Ozzie, as her brother and his buddy thumped and swatted through the undead madness. They were almost there.
“Come on!” Zack and Rice shot up some marble steps and waited for Zoe to drag Ozzie and his dead leg up, too.
“She better be in there,” Zoe said, out of breath at the top. Ozzie pulled out his big knife and cut them loose. The three-legged race was over.
Zack lifted open a window and climbed over the sill, landing on the plush carpet of the interior. Rice tumbled through the window next, followed by Zoe. Ozzie limped inside, using the field hockey stick as a cane.
As they made their way up a staircase in the abandoned mansion, Zack paused midway, sniffing the air. “Do you smell that?”
Zoe breathed in deeply through her nose. “Uckh!” she coughed. “Rice, was that you?”
“Sorry,” said Rice. “I’m nervous.” He waved his hand behind his rump.
“Man.” Ozzie shook his head. “That’s awful.”
“Not him!” Zack groaned. “It smells like coffee up there.”
He led the way to the second floor, twitching his nostrils like a bloodhound, as they followed the scent of fresh-brewed coffee to the door outside the Oval Office.
They entered the President’s inner sanctum.
A Secret Service agent swung around to face Zack. He wore a black suit and sunglasses and carried a cardboard tray that held four cups of coffee. The man in black swept his coat away and reached for his hip like a Wild West gunslinger. His hand gripped the cold black metal of his firearm.
Panicked, Zack looked over his shoulder at Rice, Zoe, and Ozzie.
The sopping-wet trio looked bedraggled and frightening. Rice wheezed loudly. Ozzie wobbled, balancing on one foot, grimacing and snarling through the pain of his cracked leg bone. Streaks of makeup ran down Zoe’s face, making her look like the Joker from The Dark Knight.
“Wait! We’re not zombies!” Zack shouted.
“Coulda fooled me.” The Secret Service dude sighed, and he took his hand off his holster. “Your friends blend right in.”
“Where’s Madison Miller?” Zack stepped forward.
“How do you know about her?” asked the agent. “She’s classified information.”
Zack sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose. He told the tale of ginkgo biloba and BurgerDog and Madison’s immunity and Greg’s unzombification into NotGreg. Of the colonel and his parents. Of the cross-country flight and their brushes with death.
There was a long pause. The man in black took a sip of coffee and wiped his eyes. Was he crying? Then he stuck out his hand. “Special Agent Gustafson.”
“Zack Clarke, Zombie Chaser.” Zack shook Agent Gustafson’s hand.
Agent Gustafson walked over to a large portrait of George Washington hanging over the fireplace. “Come with me,” he said, flicking the gold-leaf frame on the bottom of the painting. It flapped open like the hidden controls on a television set.
Agent Gustafson punched a series of numbers on the keypad. The portrait shook, and the fireplace lifted, revealing a dim, oak-paneled hallway lit by fancy light fixtures that looked like lanterns. The hall was furnished with antique end tables and built-in bookshelves. A thin Persian carpet ran the length of the passageway, and the walls were hung with famous-looking paintings.
The group followed Agent Gustafson to the dead end of the secret hall, where he stopped in front of a bookcase. Then he picked a thick, leather-bound volume off the shelf, took off his shades, and looked into the empty slot where the book had been. A blue laser scanned his eyeball, and the bookcase disappeared as it lowered into the floor and revealed a clear booth made of thick plastic.
“Get in.” The man ushered them inside and pressed a button labeled Z on the elevator panel.
Zack watched through the glass walls as the transparent booth dropped rapidly down, down, down. Zack looked at the secret service agent. Could he be trusted? He seemed okay, but if Zack had learned anything at all in the past twenty-four hours, it was that nothing was ever really what it seemed.
“Where are we going?” Zack asked Agent Gustafson.
The man didn’t answer.
Bing!
Wherever it was, they had arrived.
CHAPTER 19
The glass wall of the phone-booth elevator opened, and they all stepped into a sterile metal passageway that looked like an oversized air vent. A set of hospital doors swung open automatically on their approach and they entered the top-secret laboratory located somewhere underneath the White House.
“Gustafson!” a voice boomed. “Where’s my mother-lovin’ coffee?”
A big man in a military uniform walked toward them from the back of the room.
“This is Brigadier General Munschauer, White House chief scientist.”
“Who are they?” The general pointed at the kids.
“They’re friends of the girl, sir.”
“Where’s Madison?” Zack demanded.
“Watch who you’re talking to, hotshot. I haven’t had my evening coffee yet.” The general picked up a cup from the tray and took a sip. “Kah!” He savored the taste, sniffing the hot drink. “Your friend is quite a specimen…. How did you get here all the way from Phoenix?”
“Ozzie flew us,” said Rice, gesturing to their wounded pilot.
“The boy’s leg needs attention, sir,” Agent Gustafson explained.
The general bent down on one knee and inspected Ozzie’s fractured shin. He looked up at Agent Gustafson. “Take him to Room twenty-three. Tell them to reset the bone and cast him up.” The special agent carted a wheelchair over to Ozzie, who plopped down in the seat and was rolled off down the hall.
“Follow me,” the general said. He led Zack, Rice, and Zoe to a curtained-off section of the laboratory.
“Right now she’s stable,” General Munschauer said. “But she’s lapsed into a metabolic retox and her B and T cells are severely depleted.”
“Not possible,” Zoe said. “Madison doesn’t even eat BLTs…. She’s a vegan.”
“You’re not really speakin’ our language, sir,” Zack explained.
“See for yourselves.” The general pulled back the curtain.
They gathered around the gurney.
Madison had a plastic tube running up her nostrils and an IV tube stuck in her arm. Her skin was gray and wrinkly, and she took quick, shallow breaths. Suction cups were stuck to her forehead. Dangling tubes and plastic cylinders filled with variegated fluids hung around her face. Her eyes were shut, and a heart monitor beeped slowly with her pulse.
“Is she asleep?” Rice asked.
“Not exactly…,” General Munschauer replied dismally. “She’s recuperating.”
“She looks like ET at the end of ET,” Zoe said, her voice quivering.
Zack turned to the general. “She’s going to be okay, right?”
Munschauer cleared his throat. “We hope so….”
Zoe petted her friend’s head and whimpered, “You used to be so beautiful.”
Just then, Rice’s backpack started to rustle and growl. Twinkles barked. Rice unzipped his bag, and the tiny Boggle pup jumped out. Zack scooped him up, and Twinkles whined happily.
“Arf!”
The heart machine next to the stretcher beeped faster, and everyone turned toward the gurney.
Madison opened her eyes. “Twinkles?” she whispered meekly.
The puppy jumped from Zack’s arms onto the stretcher. Twinkles licked Madison’s face delicately.
“Hey, boy…” Madison coughed softly.
“You all should be extremely proud of your friend,” the general told them. “Her courage is remarkable. She single-handedly unzombified the First Family, and because of her, a lot of important people are still human.”
“Well, what about the second family…and the third…and the millionth?” Zack demanded. “A lot of people need her help—not just the ‘important’ ones.”
“If Madison had known you weren’t helping everybody, she’d never have let you use her up,” Rice said.
All of a sudden, a tall woman with red hair opened the curtain. She wore a white lab coat with a name tag that read DR. DANA SCOTT, DISEASE & IMMUNOLOGY TASK FORCE. She pulled down a mint-green scrub mask from her face. “Time for your shot.” Dr.
Scott squeezed past the kids, holding a large syringe. She squirted some liquid into the air and flicked the tip of the needle.
“I’ll leave you to your business,” General Munschauer told the doctor, and left.
“No more needles,” Madison said wearily.
“This is just a B-twelve shot to help boost your immune system,” she said kindly. She pinched Madison’s arm and depressed the plunger.
“What’s the B stand for?” Rice queried.
“Vitamin B.”
“Oh,” he said. “I thought it was for ‘biloba.’”
“Like ginkgo biloba?” Dr. Scott laughed. “Why?”
“Because that’s, like, the whole reason she’s the antidote.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, and if you give ginkgo to zombies, it knocks them out and, like, slows the zombie virus or something….”
“Slows down the virus, really…?” Dr. Scott stared off into the lab, thinking out loud. “But without an original specimen, I can’t produce a serum….”
“Specimens?” Rice nudged Zack. “We’ve got mad specimens….”
“If we just had a sample of the original virus, then I might be able to generate a viable base serum to mass produce the antidote…,” she went on, still talking to herself.
Rice wriggled out of the shoulder straps and reached into his pack. He held up the plastic bag with the zombified fingertips still twitching around inside. Rice then opened the Ziploc baggie and dumped out the revolting day-old zombie burger. The processed mystery meat pulsated as if it were alive.
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