Zombie Elementary

by Howard Whitehouse

  Our bus driver is Mr. Stine. He’s retired from the dairy. Before that, he was in the navy for twenty years. He’ll tell you all about it if you let him. I let him, once. I thought he’d never stop talking. Point is, he’s real old and deaf, and my mom said something about suing the school system if he “drives that darn bus into a tree” (although she only said that when she thought I couldn’t hear her talking to my dad). I guess she means he’s pretty much blind as well. That’s okay—I kinda like him. He gives us hard candy sometimes, the kind where you could lose a tooth.

  Anyway, the bus was about to pull away when Alex Bates suddenly staggered on out of nowhere. He wasn’t waiting at the bus stop, ’cause I’d have noticed him. And I’m pretty sure he wasn’t in school that day.

  I’m also pretty sure he didn’t have chicken pox. He looked even worse than the day before. His head was lolling to one side, his tongue was sticking out and his eyes were just weird. I mean, crazy weird, not just goofball weird. You know how when you get on the bus just as it starts up, it’s easy to get kind of off-balance and trip over your own feet? Yeah? Well, Alex was walking like that when he stepped off the sidewalk, and the bus wasn’t even moving yet. He had his arms stretched out again. As he came down the aisle, he started up with the moaning.

  “NNGAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!”

  He was about level with Honor and her friends, and he turned around, flailing his arms about. I swear he was trying to grab at them, but Honor ducked down and pulled her friend Barbara Jane Swenson behind the seat back so he missed. All the third-grade kids shrieked and screamed. Mr. Stine turned and yelled, “Pipe down, you young whippersnappers!” which is what he always says, and stomped on the gas pedal so the bus lurched forward into traffic. (I guess that’s what my mom was talking about with all the suing and stuff.)

  So the bus zoomed ahead, and a couple of cars honked their horns, and everyone got rocked back in their seats. Except Alex, of course, who got thrown down the aisle real fast. He stayed on his feet, and his arms were going crazy and trying to grab people, and his head was bobbing around like one of those bobbleheads you see. Luke yelled something at him, but I couldn’t make out the words. Anyhow, just as Alex came past me, I figured, what the heck, I’m not gonna be just ducking and dodging this clown anymore. I was pretty much pi—okay, I know I can’t say that. I was ticked off about the day before, about running away and nobody believing me anyhow.

  So I stuck my foot out and he fell over it and took a dive toward the emergency door at the back of the bus.

  Did I mention he was howling “BRAIIINNNSSS!!!!” as well? I shoulda said that already. And “NNGAAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!” of course. It was like—what’s the word?—his catchphrase.

  ZOMBIE TIP

  It is useless to attempt to discuss things with a zombie. Their conversation skills are extremely limited, and they simply want to bite you as soon as possible.

  The sixth graders who took up the back seats could be pretty snotty to us younger kids, but they weren’t acting cool now. They were just scared little kids, and they were crying and calling out for their moms like we heard Alex Fellowes had done yesterday. I guess they had a real good reason to be afraid, though, because Alex (Bates, the zombie, not Fellowes, the wuss) was biting at their ankles.

  Anyhow, I was still ticked, so I squeezed past Alex while he was distracted with standing up and biting at the same time and pulled on the emergency release handle to make the back door swing open. I was maybe gonna push Alex out of the door myself when suddenly Mr. Stine hit the brakes (like he does about five times every trip) and Alex lost his balance. Then Mr. Stine suddenly put his foot on the gas again (like he always does after he brakes). Alex went flying out the back door and landed on the hood of a Toyota Corolla.

  It was okay, though, because he just rolled off into the gutter. Toyotas are reliable cars, my dad says. No damage I could see. Then Alex got up, and he turned around waving his fists at me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I’m pretty sure it was either “NNGAARRRGGGGHHH!!!!” or maybe “BRAIINNNSSS!!!!” I have to say, his vocabulary had really gotten a whole lot worse with the zombie thing.

  The bus hauled round a corner and the rear door slammed shut. All the kids looked at me with real big eyes. Nobody said anything. I just muttered, “Chicken Pox? I don’t think so!”

  Nobody said anything to that, either.

  LARRY: And then I got off the bus.

  KYLE: When it reached your street.

  LARRY: Yeah. Me and Honor walked home.

  KYLE: Like you do.

  6

  I really needed to find out what was going on. So I called Jermaine.

  As I mentioned, he’s my best friend. He’d been out of school for two days with a nosebleed. Nobody fakes a nosebleed like Jermaine. But it’s always just two days, tops, because otherwise his mom would insist on taking him to the doctor, and Jermaine doesn’t want to risk that. He’s the smartest person I know.

  “Larry! What the heck happened today? All the kids are talking about the bus!”

  I remembered that, even though Jermaine had been out of school, the Torres brothers live two doors away from him, and Luke would have gone right over to tell Jermaine about Alex Bates. So I told Jermaine the whole story.

  It’s the same story I’ve already told, so I’m not gonna say the whole thing over, if that’s okay with you. Anyhow, Jermaine was pretty much floored by the whole thing. Then he said something that shows how smart he really is: “Sounds like Alex got turned into a zombie.”

  “A what?” I replied.

  “A zombie,” he said. “You know, an undead creature with no will of his own except to kill the living and suck out their brains for sustenance.”

  He says stuff like that. Like I told you, he’s real clever.

  “How does that happen?” I asked him.

  “Different theories,” Jermaine went on. “A virus. Or radiation. Bad fish sticks in the back of the freezer. Lots of ideas floating around. There’s a whole field of study.”

  ZOMBIE TIP

  There are many views on the origins of zombies in the scientific community, and a thriving exchange of expert opinion is common. However, for the ordinary citizen, it is less important to understand how zombies originated than it is to know where they are right now and how to hide from them.

  “How do you know this?” I said.

  “Science magazines,” he told me. Jermaine’s dad’s a dentist and Jermaine’s been reading everything on the waiting room table since he was, like, five. He’s a genius.

  “Plus movies,” he said. “You know, Night of the Living Dead—that’s real old, like, before my dad was even a little kid. 28 Days Later. Resident Evil, parts one to five. World War Z. Also The Walking Dead on TV. You need to do some research.”

  “How am I gonna do that?”

  “I’ll be over later with some documentation,” he answered.

  About that time, Honor peeked around the door into my room. She’s pretty good about not messing with my stuff, and I guess we get on better than most kids I know. But she’s only seven—no, she turned eight awhile back—and mostly we don’t talk too much except, you know, “Did you spit in my Pepsi?” and “What’s that sticky stuff?” Normal brother and sister conversation.

  “Hey, Larry,” she said. “You did really good today on the bus. I never saw anyone act like Alex did. I’m glad you kicked him out the back door.”

  “I didn’t really kick him out, but I was gonna. I think.”

  “What was wrong with him? He was acting crazy. Bad crazy, not goofy crazy.”

  “He’s been turned into a zombie,” I told her.

  “Oh,” said Honor. “That’s bad.”

  KYLE: She was pretty calm about it?

  LARRY: She’s pretty grown up for her age. Like, she knows Miss Flowers who teaches piano and Mr. Morse the shop teacher don’t need to spend so much time sorting out the sheet music after school. She explained it to me. So I guess zombies are no big
deal to her.

  KYLE: But zombies are a HUUUGE deal!

  LARRY: Huh. Right. Yeah, I guess they are.

  7

  So Jermaine showed up to stay overnight carrying a pile of DVDs. “This is research material,” he said. “You need to memorize this stuff.”

  He said this like Coach Chicka (who coaches our Little League team, the Tigers) talks about memorizing baseball plays. I had to concentrate real hard.

  “That’s it,” said Jermaine. “I can tell when you’re trying to learn stuff, ’cause your eyebrows meet in the middle and you chew on your lip.”

  Huh.

  Anyhow, he slipped a disc into the player in my room.

  The movie was real old, black and white. I guessed it must be about a hundred years old. It was called Night of the Living Dead. I settled down to watch it.

  ZOMBIE TIP

  George A. Romero’s 1968 cult favorite Night of the Living Dead is considered a classic of the horror movie genre. Not as well known, however, is the fact that the movie is an educational film for those who need to know what to expect when the zombie hordes come to your neighborhood. Get a copy and watch it every week.

  There’s this girl who goes with her brother to the cemetery, and he’s teasing her, and then a zombie gets him, which I guess serves him right for being kind of a dope. She takes off in his car, the zombies chase her and she gets kind of upset about the whole thing. I could understand that part. Anyway, she shows up at an old house where a guy acts all superhero and takes down a bunch of zombies. Then he wants to board the place up to keep the zombies out, which makes sense, you know? I mean, zombies don’t care if they get cut up by broken glass when they come through the windows. And then there are some other people hiding in the basement, and they don’t want to come out. One guy’s being real mean about the whole thing, and the hero guy argues with him. Then there are more zombies and a truck that’s outta gas and a kid who turns into a zombie and this real pretty girl who eats her boyfriend.

  But you don’t need to know the plot. I was watching it for tips. You know, useful plays in case I had to fight zombies myself.

  Stuff I found out about zombies:

  • It wasn’t just Alex who walked like he’d tied his shoelaces together. They all did.

  • They were real determined. Stubborn. If they couldn’t pull the boards you nailed over the windows down right away, they just kept at it. It’s not like anyone was calling them in for bedtime.

  • They were pretty stupid one-on-one. Which was okay if they came in ones. If they came in bunches, us guys—the not-zombie types—were in a buttload of trouble. (Can I say buttload?)

  My mom came in while we were watching. I’m not supposed to watch scary movies (or pro-wrestling or shows on cable with the parental advisory “Nudity, Language, Adult Situations”) but I guess that, since the movie’s real old and in black and white, she figured it was The Addams Family or Leave It to Beaver. “Huh!” she said as the zombies hammered on the door to the house. “I never got why this was supposed to be so funny.” I don’t know what she thought it was—The Munsters, maybe? Then she reminded us not to stay up late, even though it was Friday and no school the next day, because we had a Little League game against the Pirates in the morning.

  Alex Bates was on the Pirates’ team.

  KYLE: So, the movie was like a training film?

  LARRY: I guess.

  KYLE: And you play baseball?

  LARRY: I already told you that.

  KYLE: Right. Can you explain to everyone about Little League and stuff? Some people might not know.

  8

  I play for the Tigers. We are in the minors, which is ages nine and ten. After next year I’ll be going to the majors, which is eleven and up. But that’s not the point. Sorry.

  The Tigers are sponsored by Cheesehead Ed’s Pizza (Home of Authentic Wisconsin-style Pizza, it says here on the napkin I’m looking at). We go to Ed’s after every game and eat pizza, and the moms and dads drink beer. It’s a pretty good deal, though I gotta say Bart Allen’s getting pretty darn fat and doesn’t run as fast as he did last year when we were the Pixies, sponsored by the Age of Aquarius New Age Spa and Holistic Healing Center.

  Being called the Pixies pretty much sucked, especially as the sponsor, Moonbeam, insisted on us doing Buddhist chanting during warm-ups. But Moonbeam moved to Nepal or New Jersey or somewhere, and Cheesehead Ed let us call ourselves something cool. We chose the Tigers. I know he really wanted to call us the Pepperonis. That would have sucked too.

  Anyhow, we practice Tuesdays and Thursdays in the season, and play on Saturdays. Jermaine plays second base. I’m third baseman.

  My dad said I could have his old Louisville Slugger when I start batting 300. It’s made from hickory. It used to belong to a neighbor’s kid when Dad was growing up. The kid got a trial with the Orioles but blew it and gave up playing, so he gave the bat to my dad. They said Cal Ripken, Jr. touched it during practice once, when he was a rookie. Pretty cool, huh?

  At that point I was batting a 285, so I knew I was gonna have to wait a while. My old bat was okay, but I was getting too tall for it. I’d just had a growth spurt.

  LARRY: Is that enough about the Tigers?

  KYLE: Yeah. People just need to know enough about the team and Little League.

  LARRY: I think most people already know.

  KYLE: I don’t know, because I don’t play.

  LARRY: That’s ’cause you have bad asthma. You need that inhaler all the time.

  KYLE: Gee, thanks for bringing that up.

  LARRY: Sorry, dude.

  KYLE: That’s okay, I’ll edit out that part of the story.

  So, anyhow, we were at the field. The Pirates all live in Cedar Heights, which is on the other side of town. Nick Walker’s mom usually brought a bunch of Pirates in her Plymouth Voyager van, and she was late. So, while the rest of the Pirates waited for the whole team to show, Jermaine and I were warming up with the other guys, throwing the οl’ horsehide around, practicing our swings. Then the coach called us to go through our game plan. Again. It’s like he thought if we had the plan drummed into our skulls over and over, it would be perfect.

  But we all knew it wouldn’t be perfect—Rob Adams wouldn’t have taken his Ritalin, and Hunter Jordan’s shoe would come off ’cause he had to wear his brother’s old shoes and they wouldn’t fit him for another year.

  Coach Chicka is kind of an a—kind of a jerk, sometimes. He has this thing about General Patton from World War II. That’s what my dad says, anyway. Always going on about defeating the enemy and something about making them die for their country. I don’t normally say this about something serious like baseball, but really it is only a game. Coach doesn’t get that. And his son Joey’s pretty terrible, but he always pitches first. A lot of the kids on the team don’t like that. Not even Joey.

  So, Coach was going on about the batting order for the fifth time, Jermaine was pulling faces and I was trying hard not to bust out laughing. Then this red minivan turned into the parking lot at about sixty miles an hour, screeched to a halt and the missing Pirates bailed out.

  Only they didn’t run over like you’d expect. They were all—what’s the word I used before?

  Shambling.

  Yeah, that’s it.

  9

  I was watching the minivan, and I spotted this one kid leap out of the back hatch and run like heck across the parking lot toward the highway. This other kid was after him, but he was chasing with a jerky kind of step, so he couldn’t catch up. I squinted so I could see better. Yeah, it was Alex. He picked up something. It looked like a helmet. Maybe the other kid dropped it.

  Nick Walker’s mom was last out of the van, and she was yelling at the kids. I couldn’t hear her, but she was waving, so I guess it was more of a “Have a good game and don’t get hurt!” kind of yelling, not a “Hey! How come you kids are staggering forward with your arms out?” kind.

  Grown-ups!

  I guess I
was expecting the kids to walk toward the crowd and start, you know, grabbing and biting. But they didn’t. They trooped toward the dugout like they were a baseball team.

  “They retain a residual sense of normalcy,” said Jermaine.

  I stared at him.

  “Like in Dawn of the Dead. In that movie the zombies all went to the shopping mall because they were conditioned to go there. It was, like, the normal thing to do. The Pirates came to play baseball, so that’s what they are going to do.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, trying to figure this out. “I guess they had their uniforms on ready for the game. So what happened?”

  “Obviously Nick’s mom picked up Alex, and he got in the van and just started biting everyone. You saw the kid who ran? That was Jeff Wasileski from our school. I bet he was right at the back and managed to roll over the seat into the cargo area with the bats and gloves and stuff.”

  Right, I thought. I remembered what Alex was like on the school bus. Maybe he had a hard time getting back into the cargo area to bite that last boy. Jermaine was thinking the same thing.

  “Jeff Wasileski’s pretty smart, so maybe he used his mitt and his catcher’s mask to keep from getting bitten.”

  ZOMBIE TIP

  The baseball catcher’s mask, gloves, leg guards, and chest protector offer excellent defence from zombie bites. Ask for a set for your birthday. It’s pretty expensive, so yard sales, online discounters, or maybe eBay are your best bets.

  A Google search for zombie armor for sale brings up almost two million hits. I’m not kidding.

  I thought about this for a moment. But then it was time to play baseball.

  We were up to bat first. I’m fourth in the batting order, so I got to watch for a while. Jermaine’s number five.