Zombie Elementary

by Howard Whitehouse

KYLE: You did something else?

  My dad was burning yard trash over by the shed where he keeps the mower and all the gardening stuff. My mom always tells him to watch the fire in case it, you know, gets out of control and sets the shed on fire. He never takes any notice. He was out front working on his roses. Good.

  I took two good-sized bits of wood and picked up the leg. I shoved it way down into the bonfire. I mean, way down. Mr. Snuffles whined, like I had taken his bone away or something. Which I guess I did. He squirmed. I held him by the collar.

  After a while the smell from the fire changed to, like, hot dogs or something.

  I went back into the house to check on Honor. After I washed my hands, I mean. I washed ’em real good.

  She’d stopped crying. “I’m sorry, Larry! I just wanted to hunt zombies too. Like you and Jermaine and Francine.”

  I told her it was okay, but maybe she should wait until she’s older. Maybe nine, I dunno.

  After a while, I heard Dad’s voice.

  “Hey! Marjorie! Was someone barbecuing tonight? Something sure smells good!”

  28

  It had been a long day, what with church and the cheerleaders and all those zeds in the park and getting rid of the severed leg. I was pretty tired. I thought I should get to bed early, what with tomorrow being Monday.

  Still, I needed to call Jermaine.

  “What do you need to speak to Jermaine for?” asked my mom. “You saw him this afternoon.”

  “Uh, something for school tomorrow,” I said.

  “Larry, did you forget? It’s a Teacher In-Service day tomorrow, so you get a day off.”

  I smiled at Mom. Usually I remember when school’s out. “Oh, yeah. But I still need to call him.”

  Mom handed me the phone, then sat down right next to me with a magazine. I wished I had my own phone. All the other kids do.

  “Jermaine. Yeah, it’s me. I had to, uh, deal with something after you left.” I couldn’t say what. I hoped he’d catch on. He did. Like I told you, he’s smart.

  “Hmm. The leg, right? Darn it, I shoulda noticed when the dog didn’t have it anymore. You saved it for O’Hara?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you dispose of it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Permanently?”

  “I guess.”

  “Buried it? That won’t work with Mr. Snuffles.” I smiled, ’cause I’d figured that one out myself.

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Mailed it to BURP in Washington, DC? I guess that’s where their lab would be.”

  “Nope.” Actually, I liked that idea a lot. But it would probably have taken a lot of stamps and I would have had to leave it in the mailbox at the end of our driveway. The zombie might have found it. I’d get in a lot of trouble if I caused the undead to mess with the mail waiting for pickup. That’s a federal offense. Plus, Mom sends out paid bills on Monday mornings, and I wouldn’t have wanted her to meet a zombie in her robe and slippers. (Mom, not the zombie.)

  “Burned it?” asked Jermaine.

  “Yup,” I answered.

  “Smell terrible?”

  “Like hot dogs.”

  My mom gave me a funny look. “Your dad said he smelled hot dogs. Must be some cookout if Jermaine could smell it from his house.”

  “Tomorrow,” Jermaine went on, “I got a plan. I know who could help us with fighting zombies. Someone with a vehicle and, you know, equipment. An adult. We could go see him.”

  I’d about given up on adults helping with the zombie problem. The only grown-up who knew about the outbreak was from the government, and he came to ask us to help him. And I didn’t wanna talk to Mr. O’Hara right then, ’cause I’d have had to tell him about the roasted leg. He’d have been mad at me.

  “You know Chainsaw Chucky?” asked Jermaine.

  Chainsaw Chucky has commercials running on local TV channels. I saw one last night. He’s this weird long-haired guy who runs a business selling chainsaws. Fixing busted chainsaws. Anything with chainsaws, really. His grandma is always in the commercials with him. She’s weird too. They sit on the porch of this beat-up old house, and Granny sings a little song:

  “Ripping up high prices

  that’s Chucky’s Mission!

  Chopping up our rivals

  cutting down the competition.”

  Chucky fires up his chainsaw, and they both grin at the camera. Neither one has a lot of teeth. Scary, sort of. Like they’re both a little nutso.

  So I guessed that’s who we’d be going to see in the morning.

  I got up in the night to get a drink of water from the bathroom faucet. I heard something outside. I looked out the window, across to the Zollinger house. There was something large rooting around in the bushes.

  I closed the window and made sure the catch was locked.

  ZOMBIE TIP

  Locking a window is completely pointless. Zombies always break windows. They have no respect for other people’s property.

  29

  “Why do you think Chainsaw Chucky could help us?” I asked Jermaine.

  “Wait ’til we get there!” Jermaine replied. “He’s our man!”

  “Isn’t he, uh, kinda crazy?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  We rode our bikes all the way along the main highway out of town. It’s maybe three miles. I had my bat in a bag over my shoulder. Jermaine had left his BB gun at home. We pulled into this scrubby yard in front of what looked like what happens if you let an old farmhouse and barn fall down. There was a big sign out front:

  CHAINSAW CHUCKYS

  CHAINSAWS FOR SAIL, FIXED, RENTED

  “You’ve been here before?” I asked Jermaine.

  “I came out with my dad once,” he replied. “Trust me on this, okay?”

  Jermaine led the way onto the porch. It was pretty rickety. I’d seen it before. It’s the same porch in the TV commercial. He pulled on a string and a bell rang. He grinned at me.

  “Kin ah hep yew?” asked a voice. It was an old lady voice, croaky. The screen door opened, and a tiny woman stood in front of us. She smelled of mothballs and Marlboro cigarettes. I knew they were Marlboros ’cause she had a new pack in her wrinkly hands.

  I’d seen her singing on Channel 148.

  Jermaine gave her his most polite smile. “Good morning, ma’am. We’d like to see Mr. Chucky, if we could.”

  “Is it about a chainsaw?” she asked.

  Obviously, we didn’t have a chainsaw with us. Ten-year-olds don’t have chainsaws. I said that earlier, right?

  “In a way it is,” said Jermaine.

  She led us around the house, past a beat-up truck with a lot of rust on the side, to a big timber shed. “Hey! Chucky!!!” she yelled. “Got customers!”

  A man’s voice came back. “Send ’em in!”

  Jermaine grinned at me again. We walked into Chainsaw Chucky’s workshop.

  It was full of chainsaws. Big ones, little ones, gas-operated saws and ones that run off an electrical cord. Chainsaw parts hanging everywhere. From the ceiling. On a table. On a bench. On the floor.

  On the walls, Chucky had movie posters. Evil Dead. Zombieland. Army of Darkness. They all showed people fighting zombies. With chainsaws. The people, I mean, not the zombies.

  ZOMBIE TIP

  A lot of people think that chainsaws are ideal weapons for fighting zombies. It’s more accurate to say that people who like fighting zombies are the same people who like operating chainsaws. But we’ll get to that later.

  Jermaine jogged my arm. I turned around. Chucky was in the room with us. He was real tall and lanky, but he had big arm muscles. Tattoos as well. Big beard. Lots of hair.

  “What kin ah dew for yew young fellas? Is it about chainsaws?”

  He grinned. Not many teeth.

  “Mostly it’s about zombies,” said Jermaine.

  30

  Chainsaw Chucky gave us both a look I hadn’t seen from an adult. Not when we mentioned zombies, anyway. (Not that we ever do.)
<
br />   It was a real serious look.

  “Ah’ll ask Granny to bring us some lemonade, and yew kin tell me all about it.”

  Between Jermaine and me, we told him the whole story. Granny stayed to listen too.

  “Huh,” she muttered. “Ah knew it. It’s a sign of the End Times. It’s like the Book of Revelation said.”

  That’s in the bible. Right at the end. Pastor Linda doesn’t preach from it. It’s where all the bizarre stuff is, Mom says. Chucky ran his fingers through his beard, like he was trying to scratch his chin but couldn’t find it.

  “Right,” he said. “We got two problems. One, we gotta deal with the source of the infestingation. Yew find out where it started and what started it. Then yew finish it.”

  He smashed one fist into his other hand and went on.

  “Second, we got to deal with all the zombies runnin’ around bitin’ folks and makin’ more zombies.”

  “Or just eating their brains,” I said.

  “Yeah, that too,” agreed Chucky. “Cain’t say which is worse, really.”

  He squinted for a minute. I guessed that showed he was thinkin’. Sorry, thinking.

  “Yew got no idea when this zombie outbreakin’ started, then? It was jes that one kid at school?”

  “Yeah, just Alex Bates.”

  “Anythin’ strange going on? Visitors to the school? Flu shots? Eye exams? Foreign exchange students? Science experiments?”

  Chucky had a big long list of stuff that might turn us into zombies. He’d seen all the movies.

  “Nuh-uh. Not that I recall.”

  I thought back to the day I’d met Alex coming down the hallway. It was first period after lunch and—

  “What was lunch that day?” asked Chucky.

  “I dunno. It was Thursday. Meatloaf. Thursday was meatloaf. It’s terrible. Most of us don’t eat it. Then the cafeteria staff keep trying to serve it up in different ways for days afterward. Like spaghetti with meatballs made of Thursday’s meatloaf, and hamburgers made of Friday’s meatballs.”

  I guess this was a lot to say about cafeteria food. I’m always interested in food.

  “Reason ahm askin’ is the movies show several theories about how zombies git started. One’s about medical experiments. One’s about alien spoors in the air floatin’ about. But one is about—”

  “School cafeteria food!” shouted Jermaine. “That makes sense!”

  “Hold your horses, son. It’s a theory. See, if it was the meatloaf, say, we’d have to isolate the remainin’ meatloaf and—”

  “Have it examined by a team of federal agents and scientists from Washington, DC,” exclaimed Jermaine. We didn’t mention BURP, since we’d promised Mr. O’Hara we’d keep it secret.

  “Well, ah was thinkin’ of dousin’ it in gasoline and burnin’ it, but your idea’s okay too.”

  ZOMBIE TIP

  The origins of any zombie outbreak are open to different interpretations. The concept that school cafeteria food might be the source of the zombie virus has been suggested by scientific researchers, and by a seventh grader from Haverstraw Middle School, Haverstraw, NY. Thanks, kid!

  We finished off the lemonade. Chucky stretched. “But that’s jes one idea. We need to do a recon and see what the situation is around town. Let’s go for a ride, and we’ll see what we kin see.”

  We got in Chucky’s truck. He piled equipment in the back. Chainsaws mostly. Cans of gasoline. Boxes of, uh, something. More chainsaws.

  Granny came out of the house. She was carrying a pump-action shotgun and a box of shells. “Take this in case the minions of Satan come fer yew.”

  Chucky shook his head. “Yew know ah don’t care fer guns, Granny. Way too dangerous. People have accidents all the time. Ah’ll stick to my chainsaw.”

  31

  Chainsaw Chucky was not what you’d call a careful driver. The old truck swayed from side to side as he gunned the engine and we raced back toward town. I hoped the highway patrol wouldn’t stop us. Maybe they knew to leave Chucky alone.

  “Where was the first place yew saw bunches of zombies?” he asked. I reminded him. The baseball field. Chucky spun the wheel, and we screamed off in that direction.

  “They say zombies keep repeatin’ familiar habits,” said Chucky. “Yew know, goin’ to the mall, hangin’ out at the hardware store, like regular folks. Only undead.”

  The ball field was quiet. There was a dad and a kid playing catch. A little kid, you know, second or third grade. They play T-ball at that age. He wasn’t good. He wasn’t good at all.

  “Zombie alert!” screamed Chucky.

  What? Where? I swiveled my head around looking for zeds. Jermaine did too. Then he figured out what Chucky was yelling about.

  “That kid over there, Larry! See the way his arms are wavin’ around? See how he staggers?”

  Sure, I’d already spotted him. The dad threw, the boy put his hands up and missed the ball. But he was just a kid with limited athletic ability. That’s what Coach Chicka told Deven Black’s dad when he cut him from the team. Deven’s real, real bad at catching. But this kid was even worse.

  Oh. I got it. Chucky thought the kid was a zombie.

  Chucky jumped the curb and headed across the field. The truck swerved toward the dad and son, and stopped dead about ten feet from them. The dad looked at us like we were nuts.

  “Okay!” said Chucky. “Yew kids rescue the old guy and git him in the truck. Ah don’t think he’s been bit yet. Ah’ll deal with the zombie.”

  “That’s not a zombie!!!” Jermaine and I yelled together.

  “It’s a little zombie,” said Chucky, like it was obvious. “The old guy’s tryin’ to hold him off by throwin’ stuff at him.”

  Oh, boy.

  “Chucky, that’s not a little zombie. It’s just a kid. He’s trying to play catch with his dad,” explained Jermaine.

  “Really?” Chucky’s head spun around, like this was surprising news. “Dangit! Ah woulda took the chainsaw to the little dude!”

  He backed up the truck. The dad stared at us. The boy turned around, open-mouthed. He dropped the ball, again.

  We drove away. I looked at Jermaine out of the corner of my eye. He shook his head.

  There’s a nursing home—you know, a place for old people—about a mile along the highway. As we got close to it, Chucky started yelling. “Yee-haw! More zombies! Let me at ’em!”

  I have pretty good eyesight. I squinted. No zombies I could see.

  Jermaine yelled first. “No!!! It’s just the old folks getting out of their van.”

  An attendant was helping the seniors down from one of those big vans with the special elevator things to help people with disable-bilities get in and out. Some of them were pretty tottery, if that’s a word. You know, not real able to balance or walk too well.

  I guess they looked like zombies. If you really concentrated hard, they might be zombies. If you really, really WANTED to find zombies, you might be fooled into thinking that—

  “Chucky! Those people are not zombies. They are people’s grandparents.” Jermaine was pretty definite about how he said that. Like he was telling Chucky off.

  “Okay,” said Chucky, all sheepish. “Ah guess we’ll go past the city hall and fire department. Then circle back around the park.”

  We drove on.

  KYLE: So Chucky just thinks everyone’s a zombie?

  LARRY: Yeah, basically. I mean, people who don’t walk well. Or catch well.

  KYLE: Hmm. Oh, the word is “disabilities.”

  LARRY: What’d I say?

  KYLE: Disablebilities.

  LARRY: Oh. You could change that.

  KYLE: Probably will, Larry, probably will.

  32

  I figured that maybe there weren’t any zombies out today, and Chucky would think we’d made the whole thing up.

  In movies, it’s like there are no zombies at all, and then suddenly there are thousands. All gathering around the last groups of survivors who hole up in
a house. Or in an English pub, like in Shaun of the Dead. Or in a shopping mall, like in Dawn of the Dead.

  The mall. Right. That’s where they had to be. Jermaine said something about zombies doing the stuff they always did in regular life.

  He had the same thought as me. “The mall, Chucky! Let’s go to the mall!”

  “Yew want to go SHOPPIN’???” roared Chainsaw Chucky.

  Then the thought went off, like a lightbulb in a cartoon. “Oh. The mall!”

  Only we never actually got to the mall itself, ’cause Francine Brabansky was fighting about fifty zombies in the parking lot. You know, where you walk in next to Elegant Footwear, where mom gets her shoes. And there’s that store where they sell vacuum cleaners as well.

  Okay, I guess that part doesn’t matter.

  Francine was standing on the roof of a car. She was completely surrounded by zombies, all howling and stretching out to grab at her. Lucky she had her lacrosse stick. Whenever one got close, it was BAM and the zed went down. Or the whole head went sailing off over the parked cars. One bounced on the hood of a Honda Civic and rolled away.

  Girl was doing good. Jermaine was impressed.

  “She chose a good position. See, it’s a hatchback, which means Francine only has to watch for zombies climbing onto the hood. If she’d picked a regular sedan, she’d have to watch for zeds leaping up front and back onto the trunk. And a minivan or SUV would be too high for her to get a good swing at their heads.”

  Jermaine thinks too much.

  All the same, a zombie tried to jump up onto the hood of the car, and Francine just whacked him back into the crowd. She turned around and swept the lacrosse stick along the line of zed heads. Smack! Thump!

  “Git out the truck!” yelled Chucky. “Little girl needs some help—chainsaw style!”

  Then he was out the door. I jumped out with my bat, but Jermaine sat tight in the cab. He hadn’t brought a weapon.

  Chucky grabbed a really big, gas-powered chainsaw from the back of the truck and fired it up. Wow! Made a heck of a noise. BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!