Magic, Mystery & Zombies: YA starter set

by Elle Klass

  Gladly, I relinquished control. “Be my guest. I’m going down to the cabin and to make sure we don’t have any zombie stowaways.” I slid the cabin key off the ring and climbed down the ladder.

  I twisted the door knob. It was locked. Taking a breath of relief, I plastered my face against the glass window. The cabin appeared empty, so I unlocked the door and proceeded to open it. Remembering I left my weapon upstairs, I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Darn! Crap!

  I scanned the area. Think, Zombie Girl, think. A red box located on the wall to my right caught my eye. It said, Emergency. I pulled the handle, but it was locked. Looking at the key in my hand I pushed it into the keyhole and twisted. It unlocked and inside was an ax and a first aid kit. Strange combination.

  Grateful, I clutched the ax and sauntered through the cabin. It wasn’t big: a living area, a tiny kitchenette, a bathroom and two sleeping quarters on either side of the boat. The living room and kitchen were safe, nowhere to hide.

  I peeked my head into the open bathroom. The shower curtain was slid to the side, exposing nothing but tile. No zombies. I cleared it quickly, then proceeded to my right. My own reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror caught my eye. My nighty and body were covered in splotches of blood and, with the ax in hand, I looked like a deranged killer. Pride swelled inside me, not because of my appearance, but that I didn’t cave and freak. I hadn’t thought twice about killing a ton of zombies who would have chomped away on my flesh.

  Zombie Girl. It had a nice ring to it. I checked the bedroom to my right first. There was no door covering it, simply a royal blue curtain. Listening first, I heard nothing, so with my ax I parted the curtain. The small room appeared vacant, but I had to check the other side of the bed to be sure. Luckily, the bed cases were attached to the floor and nothing could crawl underneath. From what I’d seen, the zombified monsters weren’t capable of thought or anything as devious as crawling or opening doors and probably lacked the mobility, but I wasn’t taking any chances. They could evolve.

  Slowly, I walked towards the area between the bed and the window. My heart beat faster and I instinctively held my breath, relaxing only when I saw the area was clear. Last stop was the other bedroom.

  Standing outside the second bedroom, the curtain drawn, small taps against the floor made my body stiffen. I took in a deep breath and readied my ax as I parted the curtain with it. The first thing I noticed was the window, open slightly, not enough for a human or zombie to squeeze through; unless it had been closed part way after they slipped inside. I didn’t think a zombie would have the ability to do that, or the thought process.

  The tapping continued and seemed to be coming from the area between the bed and window. I stalked across the small area with my ax raised. When I got to the other side, a tiny white-breasted bird with darker feathers on his wings lay on the floor, flopping back and forth. Step by step, I drew closer and studied the bird. It looked like a sandpiper, but I wasn’t a birdwatcher. It appeared dead and moved in the same jerking motions as the zombies.

  Bringing my ax to its head, I prepared to chop it off, but stopped when my heart felt for the tiny bird. I turned on my heels and walked into the kitchen, grabbing the biggest bowl I could find, then went back to the bedroom and scooped the bird inside it, using my ax to scoot it closer to the container. I closed and locked the window and, clutching the bowl with the bird, went upstairs to Bryce.

  Chapter Four

  I shoved the bird under Bryce’s nose. “It looks dead, doesn’t it?” He cocked his head back, either in surprise or from the foul stench emanating from the bird. “What… where did you find that?”

  “It was in one of the bedrooms. I cleared them all, this was all I found.”

  He studied the bird with his eyes and used the sharp piece of metal I killed zombies with to poke at it. It continued its jerky movements, but had no other response. “I think it’s a zombie bird?” Shock was evident in his tone.

  “Yup, I agree. What do we do with it?”

  He shook his head. “We kill it!” And plunged the metal object through its little head.

  “What did you do that for? It was just a bird!”

  “A zombie bird that could have infected us,” said Mr. Know-it-all.

  I thought for a minute. What did I know about how people started turning into zombies? Nothing. “Do you know what caused the zombies?”

  “No. I came home from football practice to a zombie family.” Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. “I had to kill them. They were trying to eat me.”

  I remembered my parents, and felt sadness well up inside me. Until that moment, I had worked on instinct and survival, now the knowledge my parents were dead in a very bad way sunk in and made me feel his pain too. I hadn’t killed mine, instead I had escaped. “I’m sorry. My family is zombified too.”

  We sat quietly on the deck for several minutes, then I strolled downstairs to the cabin and made us breakfast. Luckily, my parents kept the kitchen loaded with canned food and the little freezer stocked. I'd never thought about it before but how did it stay cold when no one was using the boat? A generator?

  Throughout the day we took turns steering the boat. He showed me what all the buttons and gadgets did. We even tried to make an SOS call, hoping to find another living soul, but all we got was static.

  The sun dropped below the horizon and we were miles away from anything. A tiny boat floating on the white caps of the Atlantic Ocean, we took advantage of my father’s stash of beer. Finishing off the twelve pack, we were both tipsy. I rested against the bow of the boat and scanned the area.

  “There’s nothing out there, Zombie Girl. Not even flesh-eating dead people. Nothing but water,’ Bryce said, crunching the last beer can after his final swallow.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” I answered. The ocean breeze caught my hair and blew it over my eyes. I spotted a shadowy mass on the horizon, a rock possibly, or maybe it was my hair shading the view. Or it might be the effects of the beer.

  I squinted my eyes then grabbed my father’s binoculars and, to my surprise, it was a rock covered in patches of green -- maybe an island. Bryce had gone to the cabin for a potty break, so I waited for him to come back.

  After a few minutes, he resurfaced with an open bottle of my mother’s favorite wine and two glasses. I smiled. “There’s an island ahead.”

  He poured the wine then grabbed the binoculars out of my hands. “You’re full of crap.”

  I wasn’t full of anything and, under normal circumstances, would have resented his comment, but not today. He could figure it out for himself. “To our five o’clock.”

  With the binoculars pasted to his eyes he said in a quiet voice, “There sure is.” He dropped the binoculars to his side and turned toward me. His eyes widened. “What do you say we explore it?”

  I took a sip of the sweet wine. “Do you think that’s wise? I mean, we’re drunk and its night. I don’t think I have the balance and agility to kill zombies right now.”

  He rolled his eyes. “In the morning, Zombie Girl. We can get a little closer and drop the anchor for the night.”

  “I do have a real name.”

  “Do you?” He flipped chestnut chunks of hair from his eyes.

  “Yes. Maddie.”

  “Well, Maddie. What do you say?”

  I didn’t have to think. The safety of the boat was nice, but curiosity drove me. “In the morning.” A part of me also wanted a safe haven on level ground, one that didn’t rock in the water. And maybe, possibly, we’d find more living people.

  We ran out of booze and went to bed, locking everything up tight for the night. I slipped into my room and he took my parents’. I tossed and turned, unable to sleep as my parents’ zombie faces marched across my mind.

  “Are you asleep?” asked Bryce on the other side of the curtain.

  “No.”

  The curtain parted. “Me either. Every time I close my eyes I see zombies.”

  I nodded and he sat on the
bed next to me. His hair loosed from its quick-minute pony tail it fell to his shoulders and face. We talked until both of us passed out.

  In the morning I woke up, my back against a stack of pillows. Bryce’s body twisted, his torso was on my bed and his head planted on my legs, but his legs and feet hung off the bed. I shuffled my legs and he rose, wiping hair off his face.

  “Good morning,” he said in a groggy voice.

  His hair stuck out at various angles and the light through the curtain shone on his green eyes. In that moment, I realized how good looking he was and what a brush of luck it was that I found him. We had exploring to do and I didn’t have time to contemplate my crush on him further.

  Since we didn’t have any energy drinks available I fixed us coffee and another meal. We needed strength, vitality and be sober enough for zombie killing. One couldn’t be too careful. We had no idea what was on the island. Even if there were only animals, the bird had proven they weren’t free from zombiedom.

  After our meal, we searched the boat for weapons of any kind. I grabbed the metal object that had proved to be a great zombie killing tool, stuffed a sharp knife into a belt I wrapped around my waist, then gripped my ax. Bryce shoved a knife into one of his back pockets and loaded the flare gun, which he stuffed into his waistband. He picked up his handy dandy shovel and we lowered the lifeboat and jumped inside it.

  We guided the boat onto a sandy shore with thick, jungle overgrowth, only fifty yards or so from the coast. Matching glances, we stepped out of the boat and dragged it onto shore, hiding it between two bushy, tall plants.

  With his shovel, he whacked the overgrown brush and trees, and we cautiously stepped into the jungle.

  “I don’t hear anything, not even birds,” he whispered.

  I nodded my head in agreement. The silence was eerie.

  After bushwhacking up a hill, we were both drained and took a break. Neither of us had thought to pack water bottles or snacks and my mouth was parched. The air around us was hot and muggy. I plopped against a large fallen branch. A small string of ants marched along the ground beside it. My mind wondered if they were zombie ants.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “What?” I asked, raising my eyes from the ants to Bryce. I cupped my hands around my ears. My eyes fixed on the creature swinging downward from the tree.

  “Water. What? What are you staring at? Is there a zombie behind me?” he said, swinging his shovel into the air.

  I pointed towards the tree tops. “Holy crap!”

  He turned around on a dime. The distinct whacking and multiple pounding noises of his shovel slicing through the snake’s head echoed through the air. “All you could do was stare at me? You couldn’t say anything?”

  “I think it was just a garden snake.”

  “It could have been a zombie garden snake.”

  I laughed. “Zombie garden snakes, zombie birds. Hey, I even wonder if these ants are zombies. Are we the only organisms on this planet that aren’t zombies?”

  He wasn’t too amused. “Who knows, I hear water and I’m thirsty.”

  I stood up. “Let’s find it.”

  We hiked uphill following the sound to a waterfall that poured into a lake. Lush foliage and colorful tropical flowers surrounded it. Bryce set his stuff down and stripped to his tightie-whities. A gold chain hung from his neck.

  “You’re going in that water?”

  “No, I thought you wanted to see me naked. Heck yeah, I’m getting in the water! After I take a gulp and wash all this nasty zombie blood off me.”

  At this point, any shyness I may have had in my former pre-zombie life didn’t exist. “You are kinda sexy in your Fruit of the Looms.”

  He didn’t crack a smile, instead he plunged his cupped hands into the lake and drank readily. “The water is good.”

  “I’ll wait to get back on the boat. And if you turn into a zombie, know that I will kill you.”

  The side of his lip turned up in an Elvis-smile then he walked into the water. “Ohh… it’s so warm -- like bath water.”

  “Not working!”

  Something hit my head. I looked to the ground and a nut rolled to my feet, instinctively I looked upwards. “We gotta go now, Bryce!” A monkey with red eyes stared down at me from a high branch.

  Bryce looked upwards and slowly walked out of the water. The monkey leaped down towards him. He scooted out of the way and I flung my ax into the monkey’s neck, severing it. Several more monkeys leaped from the branches. “Run!” I grabbed my ax from the monkey’s head.

  Clutching our weapons, Bryce still in his undies, we ran through our bushwhacked trail, the monkeys on our butts. Every so often, he swung at them on the tree branches with his shovel. It did little to faze the bloody-eyed creatures.

  The run back to the shore seemed much shorter than the way there. He halted when he got to the end of the trail. I peered around his shoulder. Zombies! Tons of them swarmed the beach. What the heck? Where do they keep popping up from? Maybe the island harbors a resort. Heck, we didn’t have the chance to explore the entire island. More scared of the monkeys with their crimson eyes who moved as quick as me, I ran out from behind him and thrust my ax into the closest half-rigor zombie while plunging the metal object into the back of another’s neck.

  I continued this, while watching Bryce move from the woods. The monkeys behind him retreated. Were they scared of the zombies? I didn’t have time to care as I wielded my ax and pointy object at the zombies’ heads.

  My heart raced hard inside my chest, as blood pumped at a phenomenal rate through my body. I remembered my science teacher talk about fight or flight and figured this was it.

  Panting, we stood back to back as the final zombie hit the ground.

  “Time to get the boat,” said Bryce.

  With no time to relish our killing spree -- after all, there might be more or the monkeys might return -- we shoved the lifeboat into the water and paddled back to Earnest Earl.

  From the tops of the trees, the monkeys’ blood-colored eyes stared at us as they called to one another. Their high-pitched screams wailed through my ears.

  Chapter Five

  We reached my dad’s boat and climbed aboard. Bryce pulled up the anchor, while I cranked the motor and floored the pedal. Water sprayed as the boat cut through it.

  Bryce met me on top several minutes later, his hair wet and smelling of soap, wearing my dad’s clothes. The pants were so large on him that they puffed below the belt he’d wrapped around his waist. My dad’s white T-shirt sagged on his shoulders and fell against his poofing pants. I couldn’t help myself, I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the driver's seat.

  To my surprise, he laughed with me instead of throwing me his stern look.

  My belly ached after I finished. I couldn’t move and tears of laughter streaked my face.

  “Good work back there, Zombie Girl.”

  “I’d say the same, but you froze. What’s up with that?”

  “Because I kill them, doesn’t mean I enjoy it. I hate the sound of the shovel crunching through their necks and the whacking sound as I thrust it against their craniums. It’s gross.” That’s how we were different; I enjoyed killing them and wasn’t bothered by the sounds.

  “Gross? Really? I’m a girl and you’re a prissy boy.”

  “I’m not prissy,” he mumbled, taking the helm. “You need a shower; you’re bloody and you stink like rotting flesh.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes sir,” I said with a sarcastic tone and ambled down the ladder to the cabin. After my shower, wearing nothing but a towel, I rummaged through my mom’s clothes and found a summer shift that fit nicely. I turned my head downwards and shook out my hair, then lifted upwards and stared at myself in the mirror. The blood gone, I no longer looked like a serial killer or zombie killing machine.

  I put a pot of water on the stove and dumped a can of spaghetti sauce into another pan and set the burner to low. Then I preheated the oven. While I waited for the water
to boil, I went upstairs to Bryce.

  His eyes dropped to me as they took in my body. “You look sooo much better.”

  The look in his eyes, I knew he meant more than being friendly. He was attracted to me. I smiled demurely and sat on the bench, curling my legs beneath me. His eyes watched my every move. “I hope you like spaghetti, because that’s what I’m making.” Then I handed him a bottled water.

  “Thanks.” He blew a few strands of his drying hair out of his eyes and took a swig of water. “I think it’s just us.”

  I twisted my lips. “That’s not so bad, at least I like you.” I was beginning to really adore him.

  We sat quiet for a minute, then I stated, “And that snake and those monkeys weren’t zombies. They were very much alive.” I assumed they were alive; no jerky rigor mortis movements.

  “Alive or not, those monkeys were scary. And their eyes. Maybe this zombie thing is a virus and it affects monkeys differently,” he suggested.

  “I thought about that. But I’m convinced by the speed of those monkeys that they were 100% alive. All the zombie organisms make spastic, stiff movements. Like rigor is setting in.”

  His eyes turned upward in contemplation for a few minutes then met mine. “I guess you’re right.”

  The boat was cruising in the open ocean, the radar detecting nothing ahead. He took a seat beside me. “I want you to take this,” he said, lifting the gold chain off his neck and putting it around mine.

  The gold chain dropped across my chest. I brought the center object to my face. It was a compass. I closed my fingers around it. The gesture took my breath away.

  He brought his hands to my face and brushed them against my cheeks then lowered his mouth to mine. At fourteen, almost fifteen, I’d never kissed a boy and butterflies rose in my belly as his lips pressed against mine and his tongue slipped inside my mouth.

  I jumped up. “I have to check the spaghetti.” I stumbled off, nearly tripping as I walked. His kiss discombobulated me, although I enjoyed it. I turned around and drank him in. The setting sun shone on his clean hair, and on his face was a quirky smile. I lifted the compass. Words escaping me, the only thing that came out was, “Thank you.”