The Zombie Chasers (10 page)

Rice put the phone up to his ear. “Hi, Mom…I thought you and Dad were zombies…. Where are you guys? You’re still at parent-teacher night? Locked in the gymnasium? That sucks…. Sorry, Mom, I know you don’t like me using that word. Ummm, we’re okay…. I’m fine, Mom…. Okay, Mom…I love you, too.” Rice handed the phone to Zack. “Your mom wants to talk to you.”

“Mom?” Zack said. “I love you, too, Mom. I know, Mom…. Zoe? She’s busy…. Yeah, she’s in the car…. Mom, we gotta hit the road…. Tucson…The Volvo…Calm down, Mom, Madison’s driving…. Mom, stop yelling…. It’s okay, Mom, we have to go…. I love you, too…. Oh, Mom, wait…. Don’t eat any of that BurgerDog crud, I mean stuff, sorry…. Just don’t!” Zack pressed the end button and handed the phone back to Rice.

They dragged their assortment of weapons to the car, tossing them into the back with zombie Zoe. They finished loading the Volvo and buckled up, screeching off. A few minutes later, Madison stopped
at a cross street and paused.

“How do you get to the highway from here?” she asked Zack.

“I don’t know,” Zack said innocently. “My mom always drives me.”

“Well, I don’t know your neighborhood that well,” Madison said, drumming the wheel with her pointer fingers.

“Don’t look at me,” Rice said. “I don’t get out that much.”

Madison peered up through the windshield. “O-MG!” she said, pronouncing each letter deliberately.

Perched on the rooftop of a redbrick house, a cowering figure huddled in a ball, whimpering into his elbows. The man-boy lifted his head. Zack recognized his chiseled features and loveless eyes. Rice cringed.

Greg Bansal-Jones.

G
reg Bansal-Jones could best be classified as an eighth-grade super jock and a world-class bully. He looked at least two years older than his actual age of thirteen and three-quarters and probably went through a can of shaving cream nearly every week. Standing almost five feet nine inches tall, Greg was broad-shouldered, with an upper body of solid muscle. He was the captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and could totally kick Zack’s butt. And Rice’s butt. And more than likely both their butts at once.

“Bansal-Jones?” Rice half-whined, half-gulped. “Madison, the guy’s barely a caveman…. He’s a
king-size knuckle-dragger.“

“Okay, he’s sort of a meathead, but he’s so cute and helpless up there all shaking and pathetic. And anyway, we could use a little brute strength on our side for once. We’ll be the brains and he’ll be the brawn.”

Zack hated Greg, not only for being so mean, but for being so spectacularly good at being so mean. Even without Rice’s bathroom swirly episode, Greg had an impressive highlight reel of torments that any practicing bully would envy. Tripping a lonely fifth grader carrying a lunch tray. Checking an obese seventh-grade girl into a locker. Laughing, stamping his feet in the general vicinity of a substitute teacher searching for her lost contact lens. Straddling a sixth-grade weakling, pinching his nose, and funneling atomic hot sauce into his mouth. The list could go on forever.

“I’m not taking no for an answer,” Madison told them.

Zack looked up and sighed. Rice scooted across
the backseat, curbside, buzzed down the window, and whispered to Zack: “Don’t worry, man. I’m about to go medieval on this kid….” And with that, Rice stuck his pink pockmarked head outside.

“Hark, young squire! I do desire we may be better strangers, you and I, but milady requests the pleasure of your company,” he called up to Greg in his best British accent. “Come off your roost and join us hither.”

Greg’s head shot up in a welter of blubbering snot. “My mom tried to eat me!” he said, sniffling up his tears.

“Quit your sniveling!” Rice commanded. “There are droves of savage beasts on the gander. No time for molly coddling, you flop-eared knave! Get down hence!”

“Why is he talking like that?” Madison asked Zack.

“Mrs. Rice takes him to these Renaissance festivals in the summertime. It’s really weird. They all dress up in costumes and talk like they’re in the Middle Ages.”

“Greg barely understands regular English,” Madison said.

“I think that’s the point,” Zack said.

“Don’t tarry now, boy.” Rice continued heckling like a court jester.

More than a little befuddled, Greg obliged, shimmying nimbly down the gutter that ran up the house. He landed on the lawn and jogged toward the Volvo, a red gym sack slung over his shoulder. He was still decked out in his soccer gear: shorts, shin guards, cleats, and jersey, lucky number thirteen.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Mad,” Greg said when he reached the car. “Who are these nerd-bombers?”

“This is Zoe’s little brother, Zack. And this is his best friend, Rice,” Madison introduced her partners-in-slime.

“You flushed my head in a toilet bowl about a month ago,” Rice reminded him.

“Oh yeah, I remember you.” Greg chuckled. “But you look different…your face. It’s all disgusting. He’s not turning into one of those things, is he?”

“No, it’s just chicken pox,” Madison said. “But Zoe’s in the back, and she’s a full-out zombie. We’re gonna save her, though.”

“You got Zoe back there?” Greg said curiously, moving to the rear of the car.

He cupped his hands over the back window and peered inside. Zoe huffed through the window steam and growled hideously at Greg. She bashed her lacrosse helmet against the glass, knocking him back on his heels. He tripped over the curb and fell on the grass behind him. “Oh snap, she’s busted!” he shouted, popping back up.

Madison turned to Zack. “Get in the backseat.”

“No way,” Zack protested. “This is
my
car.”

“I don’t see your name on it, bro,” Greg said, opening the passenger door. “Unless your last name is Volvo.” Pause. “Is your last name Volvo, bro?”

Zack just sat and stared.

“Don’t be difficult, Zack,” Madison pleaded. “Just sit in the back with Rice.”

Reluctantly, Zack surrendered his seat and stepped out of the Volvo, shoving the open door into Greg’s dominating sneer.

“Hey, take it easy, dweebo,” Greg taunted.

Now fully recovered from his splubbering rooftop sob show, Greg took shotgun next to Madison and gave her a wink and a smile. Twinkles skittered to the backseat and jumped up in between Zack and Rice. The little dog sighed, plunking down on the seat cushion.

“Greg, did you see which way the zombies went?” Rice asked him excitedly, like an enthusiastic dog trainer would a well-trained collie.

Greg pointed straight ahead and let out a short Neolithic grunt. Then he opened his gym bag and pulled out a grease-soaked BurgerDog takeout bag. The smell
of fast food filled the car. Madison placed two fingers over her lips and puffed out her cheeks like she was going to hurl.

They followed the side street until they saw the ramp to the expressway. Greg unwrapped the BurgerDog sandwich and laid it out neatly on his lap.

“Greg, I swear if you take even one bite of that thing…” Madison recoiled.

“No,” Rice said, mirror-tapping his fingertips like a delighted super-villain. “Let him eat….”

Man,
Zack thought.
I would freakin’ love to see Bansal-Jones bite the big one on his sandwich. But what if the meathead actually turned into a zombie? He’d rip us apart. Then again, it’d be okay to whack him over the head with the shovel.

Greg took the top bun off the BurgerDog. “This is the good stuff.”

But it wasn’t the good stuff. No, certainly not. In the low light of the car, Zack and Rice both gasped at the revolting hot dog patty burger coated with its creamy lime green special sauce, wilted lettuce, and rubbery
purple onion. Underneath the goopy extras, they watched in revulsion as the meat pulsated, bubbling as if it were alive.

“See?” Greg replaced the bun and opened his mouth, ready to chomp.

“Stop!” Madison snatched the zombie burger away from Greg. “Don’t eat that!”

“Why not?” Greg asked.

“Yeah, Madison…” Rice was disappointed. “Why not?”

“Are you crazy? The last thing we need is another zombie on our hands. Look at this thing!” she yelled, holding up the sandwich. “It’s got a life of its own.” Madison put down her window and prepared to chuck it to the pavement.

“Stop!” Rice yelled. He grabbed Madison’s wrist from behind and pried loose the throbbing sandwich. “We may need this for a specimen. Just to be sure. I’ll put it in my backpack.”

Rice pulled out the bag of zombie fingers while holding the BurgerDog. Twinkles’s nose twitched from
side to side. The hungry pup bounded off the backseat and nipped at the infectious meat patty. Rice whapped Twinkles on the nose, and the little dog cowered back on the seat, licking its chops.

“Dude…” Zack whispered. He pointed at Twinkles, then at BurgerDog, then back at Twinkles again.

“Ssshhh!” Rice whispered. “Only people can turn into zombies. I read it online.”

Greg crumpled the wrapper and tossed it out the window.

Madison revved the engine and cruised toward the highway entrance, dappled with clueless ghouls. Her confidence behind the wheel reached an all-time high as she steered the car coolly through the sparse cluster of walking corpses.

They sped up the on-ramp and leveled out onto the skyway, which wrapped southbound around downtown Phoenix. The Volvo shuttled down the long stretch of gray desert highway, as Zombieville, USA, grew smaller behind them. Madison accelerated, whipping by four more hulking fiends. They growled at the passing Volvo like a crazed gang of undead hitchhikers looking for a lift.

The tires whizzed along the freeway.

Outside the car, the midnight sky was a menacing gunmetal black. Moonlit mountain ranges sprang off the horizon. Coyotes howled ominously from the fringes of nowhere. This was desert country, but Zack knew that skulking in the scrub brush, there were probably hundreds of unseen zombies camouflaged under the canopy of night’s shade.

Zack felt his sister’s hot zombie breath puffing on the back of his neck. He gave her a look that meant “stop it,” but it was no use.
She doesn’t understand anything,
Zack thought.
She never did, even when she was human.
To his left, Rice’s eyes were glazed over as he zoned out the side window. Zack watched his fat little friend pick the crusty scabs spackling his forearms and then jam the very same finger in his nostril, digging away obliviously. Twinkles panted quickly, fast asleep between them.

Zack settled into the lull of the car ride. The digital clock read 12:22
A
.
M
., and the Volvo was dead quiet. Zack’s lids felt heavy. Deprived of the constant squabbling, Zack drifted to sleep to the hum of the motor. He woke up a minute later, yawning. The clock read 1:23
A.M
.
Was it really almost one thirty in the morning?

On went the Volvo, rolling along swiftly. The headlights beamed through the darkness, illuminating the white dash marks scurrying toward them under the hood of the car. Greg was talking to Madison up front.