Zombie Field Day

by Nadia Higgins

  “Wiley!” Principal V was waiting outside the smoky glass door for him. Chad was next to him, wide-eyed and pale. He was wearing a green T-shirt with “You Say Mommy, I Say Zombie” stretched across the chest. “Walk faster!” Principal V barked. Leo quickened his pace and slid just behind Chad.

  Principal V leaned down so the boys’ heads were within inches of his white teeth and flickery tongue. “Because of your incredible disrespect, your reckless behavior, your disastrously bad judgment . . .” With every word, the boys blinked back a spray of spittle. “I sentence you to one hundred hours of hard labor!” The mushroom-headed principal stood up and took in a shuddery breath. “To be performed in my office starting immediately!”

  Principal V whipped two hula rags off his belt and presented one to each of the boys. He pushed them into his unicorned office. Then with one raised finger, he shouted, “DUST!”

  “Um, excuse me?” Leo said. A fifth grader was standing in front of the 800s shelf. She was staring at a white unicorn in her open hand. “Um, are you dusting in this area?” Leo asked.

  “Uuuuuuunnnnnh,” she said, curling up her top lip.

  “No problemo. Lots of room for unicorn dusters!” Leo said, making a wide circle around her.

  Mrs. Bird, Chad’s science teacher, was standing by the 200s shelf. She stared sadly at a green unicorn with red marble eyeballs.

  “Mrs. Bird, are you okay?” Chad asked. “Shouldn’t you be, um, teaching your students or something?”

  “P-p-p-p-p-p.” Mrs. Bird came at Chad, bubbles frothing on her lips.

  “Ahhhh!” Chad yelled.

  “QUIET!” Principal V’s voice boomed from the hallway.

  Chad shot Leo a look. There must have been half a dozen zombies “dusting” unicorns in Principal V’s office. What was that about?

  But Leo wasn’t looking. He was waving his arms in an attempt to reach something high above the 1200s shelf. Something bright green, and not at all pointy, in a corner behind a silver unicorn with black teeth. What was that? Were those leaves? It looked familiar. Leo checked for Principal V’s shadow outside the door. Nothing. He grabbed a stool from the corner and climbed up for a closer look. All of sudden, a hundred hours of hard labor seemed a lot more interesting.

  CHAPTER 5

  ZOMBIFIED

  "I have a theory,” Leo said. Six hours of dusting down, Chad and Leo were back in Leo’s lab with Roger. “Evil Principal V really is evil.”

  “Like, make-zombie-slaves-to-dust-your-miniature-unicorns evil?” Chad asked.

  “Exactly,” Leo said. “And I think he’s using this plant to do it.” Leo held out the sample of the bright green plant he’d taken from Principal V’s office. “It’s obviously some kind of cold-climate plant,” Leo said. “Notice the fine silky hairs on the leaves. That’s to trap heat. I know this plant,” Leo said. “I’ve read about it. But I don’t remember where or why.”

  “If you’ve read about it, it definitely has something to do with zombies,” Chad said. “As in, it probably turns people into zombies.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Leo said. “But I can’t find any record of it. Plus,” he added after a pause, “I took a bite of it.”

  “You what?” Chad said.

  “Many great scientists have been forced to use themselves as subjects,” Leo said. “Right, Roger?”

  But Roger was looking even more zombie-like than usual as he stared at the plant. “Such an odd color,” he said slowly. “And notice the fine green powder at the base of the leaf.”

  “What?” Leo held the plant up to the light. “I don’t see any powder.”

  “Here.” Roger took the plant and turned it upside down to show him a small leaf near the stem. “It’s just a few grains on the underside of the leaf. Easy to miss under normal circumstances, and this specimen has been tampered with. As you can see, someone has carefully wiped off most of the powder.”

  Leo jumped up and grabbed the plant from Roger.

  “Don’t even think about eating that powder, Leo!” Chad shouted.

  “I’m not going to eat it,” Leo said. He was so excited his voice squeaked a little. “I’m going to examine it.”

  He dipped a long Q-tip into the powder and wiped a green smear on a small rectangle of glass. Then he carefully placed another piece of glass on top of that one. “Microscope sandwich!” he declared, sliding the glass under a microscope. “Yeeeessssssssss!” Leo hissed as he squinted into the eyepiece. He stepped aside to let Roger take a look.

  “My word!” Roger exclaimed.

  “What? What is it?” Chad asked, taking a turn. “All I see are a bunch of lumpy green blobs.”

  “Exactly, m’boy,” Roger said. “The bacteria known as Z. coli.”

  Leo added, “One of the most powerful zombifiers in the world.”

  Prioritize. That was the word Mrs. Chandler, Leo’s English teacher, was always using. “What are your most important tasks?” he could hear her ask. “Identify those and perform them first.” For once, Leo was glad he’d listened in class. He made a list of what he needed to do, most important tasks first:

  Stop Principal V from making more zombies.

  Find antidote to cure zombies already made.

  Then he made more notes under his first task:

  Where is Principal V’s Z. coli supply? (Find and destroy.)

  How is Principal V spreading Z. coli to students?

  It didn’t take a genius zombie scientist to figure out the answer to the last question. School lunch the next day was pizza, Rotfield Middle School’s most popular entrée. That afternoon, the number of zombies at school went way up. Principal V’s office was now crowded with moaning green zombies, dusting rags in hand. Chad and Leo had to push the undead away as they frantically searched for the Z. coli powder. But all they found was row after row of miniature unicorns.

  “It’s time to move on to step two,” Leo told Roger and Chad that afternoon back at the lab. “There are too many of them. Our best hope now is an antidote.”

  “I’ve already been working on it,” Roger said. “I’ve examined our plant from every possible angle. But I’m afraid I’ve reached an impasse.” Roger sighed heavily and plopped down on his favorite hazardous materials box.

  “That means he’s stuck,” Leo explained to Chad.

  “My dear fellows, I need a specimen to test,” Roger said.

  “He needs a zombie to experiment on,” Leo continued. After a pause, he added, “And I’m going to be it. Roger, pass me the Z. coli.”

  “No way!” Chad yelled. “We need your brain alive to help us out of this mess. If anyone’s going to become a zombie around here, it’s me.” Chad poked himself in the chest, pushing in the B on his T-shirt that said, “My Other Body Is a Zombie.”

  “Well, my noble friends,” Roger said, “I would volunteer, but I’m afraid that would complicate the results. Shall we flip a coin?”

  “Wait. Maybe we could take a zombie from school?” Chad said hopefully.

  “You mean kidnap a kid from school?” Leo said. “And have parents come looking? No way! Look, I live here already. It makes the most sense—”

  UUUUhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnn.

  “Did you hear that?” Chad whispered. The boys shot to their feet and stood behind Leo’s closet door. They heard heavy footsteps, and then—

  CRAAAAAAAAAASH!

  Leo pushed the door open. There was Shelly, sprawled out on the floor of his room. One of her legs was bent weirdly around his desk chair. She was clawing the air in front of her in slow motion.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” Shelly moaned.

  “Shelly!” Leo said, running to her. “You ate the pizza?” She’d never touched a bite of school food in her life.

  But as Leo walked closer to his sister, he noticed something that made him catch his breath. The dread grip in his throat tightened so fast that he gagged.

  “Oh, Shelly,” he whispered.

  The sleeve of her blue T-shirt had been ripp
ed off. Instead, oozing strips of skin hung down to her elbow. Blood streaked down her arm and onto her hands. There, between two lines of blood, was a sight that confirmed the worst: teeth marks.

  CHAPTER 6

  GREEN GLORY

  “That means the zombies have started biting,” Leo said. He was panting a little now. “The Z. coli will spread even faster. We need the antidote now.” He placed both hands defiantly on his hips. “I’m turning into a zombie right this minute!”

  Leo bolted for the lab, but Chad grabbed him by the back of his pants. “Think, Leo,” Chad said, dropping his friend on the floor. Chad nodded toward Shelly and waited for Leo to catch on.

  Leo sat stunned for a second before Chad’s message sunk in. Of course. His stepsister, Shelly. She was a ready-made zombie specimen.

  “MMMMMMnnnnnnn,” Shelly moaned, now nibbling on the inside of her elbow.

  “I’m sorry, Shell,” Leo whispered. If he could, he would have hugged her to show her how much he meant it. Instead, he stuffed her mouth with the cleanest pair of socks he could find. Certain that she couldn’t bite him, he circled duct tape around her wrist. Then he kept on circling the tape around the leg of a lab bench. It was official: He’d taken his zombie stepsister prisoner for the sake of medical research.

  Leo and Chad had a full night’s work ahead of them. First thing was making sure no parents messed things up. That was easy in Chad’s case. He called his mother to inform her that he was spending the night at Leo’s. As usual, she just said, “Un-huh, un-huh.” And Leo and Shelly’s parents had some ballroom dance contest that would last well past “bedtime.”

  Leo, Chad, and Roger worked late into the night. They tried extra-strength antibiotics, then laser therapy. They performed infrared shock, intestinal readjustment, and cardio echolocation. Now Roger was cradling Shelly’s head in one arm. He spooned a yellow liquid into her gaping mouth. “Buttercup nectar,” he explained.

  “What about Principal V’s plant?” Leo asked. He was online, scrolling through a site called 101 Zombie Home Remedies. “Do you have any idea what it could be yet?”

  “Sadly, I do not,” said Roger. He picked up the sample from Principal V’s plant. “So strangely green,” he said, twirling it in the four fingers of his right hand. “Green like—” Roger stood up at almost human speed. “Mucinus maximus!” He grabbed the jar with the slug and held it next to the plant.

  “The exact same shade of green,” Leo said slowly.

  “Very curious.” Roger reached for Leo’s open laptop. His face became even greener as he opened the screen in front of him. “Very curious indeed.”

  At 5:02 a.m., Leo’s eyes popped open. He found himself lying on top of a pile of dusty ferns. He must have fallen asleep while conducting the mucus extraction. Chad’s head was nestled in Leo’s right armpit.

  “Ugh.” Leo shot up and pushed Chad off and into a stand of crashing beakers.

  “I’m up! I’m up!” Chad shouted, sitting upright.

  Leo sat up too and rubbed his eyes. Then Chad rubbed his eyes. Then they rubbed them again.

  Chad and Leo had seen a lot of surprises the past few days. But what they saw now topped the list. Shelly and Roger were sitting on Roger’s box, heads together. They were looking at something on Roger’s laptop.

  “Leo!” Shelly jumped up and ran to hug her stepbrother. “Oh, Leo.” She took a step back to look at him.

  “Are you okay?” Leo asked. “I’ve been really worried about you.”

  “You’ve been worried about me for a change?” Shelly laughed. “I’m more than okay. Roger’s found the antidote!”

  “I guess so!” Leo said, grinning with relief. Not only was Shelly back to being human, but she also seemed cool about the half-zombie he kept hidden in a secret lab behind the back wall of his closet.

  “Roger is simply a genius,” Shelly said, wrapping her arms around him. Roger coughed a little, and his face turned greenish pink. “I can’t believe you’ve been keeping him from me all this time.” She squeezed Roger, and green pus oozed out of his left ear.

  “I’ve been learning how Roger saved my life.” Shelly turned the laptop around to show Chad and Leo a Web site called The Nordic Museum of Zombie Folklore and Fact. “Nordic refers to people who lived in northern Europe a thousand years ago,” Shelly explained. She scrolled down to a section titled “The Outbreak of 982.”

  She read aloud: “For many years, experts have disagreed on this important event in zombie history. Is it just a myth, or did it really take place? Nordic records tell a spellbinding tale of zombie-like creatures walking the earth. The creatures are mysteriously returned to human form. The Torr Tapestry—”

  “That’s a rug with pictures on it, right?” Chad asked. He and Leo were both fully awake now.

  Shelly nodded. “The Torr Tapestry tells the story in vivid pictures. Most interesting are the middle panels, which feature a curiously bright green plant. Experts have now identified this plant as the Gloria viridis, or green glory. Nordic peoples believed it held magical powers. Sadly, this fascinating plant is now almost extinct.”

  “That’s it! That’s the plant from Principal V’s office! The green glory!” Leo shouted.

  “It is, my friend! And look closely at this picture in the tapestry.” Roger clicked to another page. Chad and Leo peered at the screen.

  “That’s our plant all right,” Leo said. “But it seems to be covered in some kind of unripe berry or—” Leo squinted.

  “They’re slugs,” Shelly said, “matching green slugs!”

  Camouflage. The word popped into Leo’s brain. The slugs were the same color as the plant because the slugs lived on the plant. They hid from predators by blending in with the plant’s leaves.

  Roger flinched as Shelly patted him on the back. “Rogie over here studied the entire tapestry for hours. He noticed that some pictures showed the green glory with slugs, and some showed the green glory without slugs. In the slug-off pictures, the people looked like zombies. In the slug-on pictures, they were human. And that’s because the slug—”

  “—is a parasite!” Leo finished. Answers were flashing like neon signs in his brain now. The slug lived off the plant. It didn’t eat the plant’s leaves—none of the leaves on the sample were chewed. It ate the green dust, the dust with Z. coli, the zombifier.

  “Even more,” Shelly was still going. “The slug gives off tons of mucus, or slime. That’s why Roger first confused it with the North American Mucinus maximus.” She pointed to the bright green slug. It was now in a jar with Principal V’s plant instead of Roger’s finger. “Of course, that’s totally understandable. But the slime of this slug—the European Mucinus sanitas—is a powerful antidote to Z. coli. That was Roger’s theory, and—” She held out her arms and twirled around. “I’m living proof that he was right.”

  “Whoa.” Chad was resting his chin thoughtfully on one hand. “So let me get this straight. Principal V gets his hands on this rare European plant. He takes all the slugs off it, cuz they eat the zombifier in the plant’s dust. He uses the dust to turn the whole school into zombie slaves. And now we need to cure everybody with the slug’s magical slime?”

  “Something like that.” Shelly picked at a fingernail.

  “Um, do we have any more slugs?” Chad asked.

  “Sadly, no,” Shelly said. “We’re guessing Principal V got rid of the slugs. Except for one, obviously, which escaped.”

  “And I found,” said Leo, “when I was swimming in gym last week. It had crawled under my green towel, probably looking for a habitat.”

  “I’ve got a plan! I’ve got it! Ding, ding, ding!” Shelly shot up and started dancing around like a game show contestant. “Notebook please, Leo!”

  Shelly turned to a fresh page and outlined her idea in neat handwriting. Even Leo had to admit it was workable. And it got him to come up with a few good ideas of his own. After several minutes and just a few cross-outs, Leo and Shelly had done it. They’d mapped out a p
lan to save their whole school from zombiehood using just one slug.

  CHAPTER 7

  ZOMBIE MAYHEM

  Chad was in charge of weapons and armor. “We don’t want to hurt the zombies,” Chad stressed. “But we need a way to beat them off if they attack.” He grabbed a checklist and went to the supply closet. Before long, he was standing by a heap of stuff. “Time to suit up,” he said.

  Chad, Leo, and Shelly tugged on stiff leather pants and leather jackets in various sizes and colors. “Hard to bite through,” Chad explained. Next came the beekeeper hats. These were long white hoods with mesh covering the faces. Chad showed Shelly how to tighten the tool belt around her waist. It was for holding the weapons—a spray bottle filled with red liquid and a sock filled with marbles.

  “Spray the tomato juice in their eyes to confuse them,” Chad explained. “That will buy you a second. And the sock is actually far more powerful than a baseball bat.

  “Hold this with your left hand,” Chad continued. He handed Shelly the metal top of a trash can. “It’s your shield.”

  “So this is it,” she said, holding the lid out in front of her. “Got the slug, Leo?”

  He patted his right jacket pocket. He wanted to say, “All zipped in,” but his mouth could only make a dry, sticky sound. Today’s dread felt like a monkey throwing rocks inside his stomach.

  “You look absurd,” Roger said, as the three zombie catchers turned to leave. “I mean that in the very best sense, of course.” Roger smiled slightly. “Good-bye and good luck, my dear brave friends.”

  “It looks just like in the movies,” Shelly whispered as Rotfield Middle School came into view. Zombies were everywhere. They drifted over the baseball field. They dragged themselves under the basketball hoops and around the playground. One zombie kept walking into the bottom of the slide over and over again.