Copyright © 2014 by Robert Lettrick
Cover illustration © 2014 by Mark Fredrickson
Cover design by Joann Hill
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023-6387.
ISBN 978-1-4231-8766-0
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Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
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18
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my parents:
My mother, for always encouraging me to let my imagination run wild, and my father, through whom I learned the value of hard work, a writer’s most essential tool after imagination.
—R. L.
We know you’ll love Camp Harmony,
We’re all so glad you’re here!
There are some problems, you will see,
But there’s no cause for fear!
It’s true the camp bus has no brakes,
And they fired all the nurses!
It doesn’t matter anyway,
Since we all go home in hearses.
The craft hut is a sweatshop,
The cook serves grubs for dinner,
The wolves are howling nonstop,
And the pool’s filled with thinner.
The outhouse leaks into the lake,
Where many swimmers drown.
It’s not their fault, for goodness sake,
The water’s thick and brown.
You’ll love our dear Camp Harmony,
It’s not our intent to scare.
The staff here means no harm, you see,
It’s just that they don’t care.
And so we write our parents
Because we cannot call.
Before the bears pick up our scents,
Save us, SAVE US ALL!
HEATH LAMBERT’S PARENTS had been bitten and turned into zombies, and now it was up to him to decide the method by which to destroy them—bashing their skulls in with a rock or chopping their heads off with the edge of a shovel. The two other boys stared at him, awaiting his decision.
“I don’t know….” he stalled. “Why can’t I just lock them in the basement or something? Why do I have to kill them? What if someone finds a cure? It could be in the cards.”
“Dude, I’m familiar with the cards. Trust me—it’s not going to happen.” Dunbar Frye fidgeted, studying Heath’s eyes for a clue to which way he was leaning. “Hurry up already. We haven’t got all day.”
Heath sighed. “It doesn’t feel right. I know my parents would do everything they could to keep me alive if the situation were reversed. This was easier when it was just killing zombies I’m not related to.”
Dunbar set his playing cards facedown on the picnic table and impatiently thrummed his fingers on their waxy cardboard backs. He had only two left, and Dunbar had an irritating tendency to rush other players when he was on the verge of winning Zombie Buffet, a game he took far too seriously. “First of all,” Dunbar lectured, “you can’t kill or cure a zombie because they’re already dead. Second, you’ll be doing your parents a favor—putting them out of their misery. Being a zombie isn’t a lifestyle choice, like going vegan or moving to Canada. How would you like it if you suddenly craved human flesh over pizza? And started walking all funny, like you just messed your shorts? It’s not a good look.”
“And the flies. Don’t forget the flies,” added Cricket Simms. Cricket was a short, scrawny kid with both hair and skin so fair that he looked like an albino, except his eyes were green instead of pink. Cricket hailed from Seattle and had never been to a summer camp before. Heath was impressed with how quickly and wholly the city kid had embraced the outdoors. Cricket and Heath had something else in common: Camp Harmony was their escape from some rough times back home.
“Flies! Exactly! Who wants to deal with flies all up in their nostrils and eye sockets?” Dunbar said, as if this were an entirely reasonable conversation. “I bet you’d be pretty grateful to the guy who puts a bullet through your head and ends your unquenchable thirst for brains.” He stretched out the A sound in brains, providing Heath with a questionable imitation of the living dead. “So what’s it gonna be? Rock or shovel? You have to choose.” Dunbar slouched back on the bench, freeing his paunchy belly from the bottom of his extra-large Camp Harmony T-shirt. Confident he’d made his case, he waited for Heath’s answer.
Heath didn’t have much in common with Dunbar, who wasn’t the most athletic boy—with his pear-shaped body and round cantaloupe face he looked like a human fruit basket. And Dunbar liked to sit down a lot, Heath noticed, which wasn’t really his thing. Heath was more of an adventurous spirit. Sitting was boring, especially at summer camp, where there were so many other things to do, like swimming, waterskiing, and hiking. There was even a zip line that carried kids over the entire length of the campground, which, sadly, was closed until the staff could figure out how to stop riders from spitting on people below. One of the counselors suggested dog muzzles. Heath didn’t think she was joking.
He hadn’t known Dunbar very long. In fact, if it weren’t for the kid’s overly sociable personality, which skirted the line of obnoxious, and because they’d been assigned the same cabin—Grosbeak—they probably wouldn’t be friends at all. Despite Dunbar’s flaws, Heath liked him and was glad they were friends. Together with Cricket they made a fun trio, even if he was forced to play Zombie Buffet now and then.
“Since I have to choose,” Heath said reluctantly, “I guess I’d cut their heads off with the shovel.”
“Wrong!” Dunbar proclaimed, then made a buzzer sound between his clenched teeth. “Now you’ve got two decapitated zombies holding you down with their arms while your parents’ severed heads bite you in the shins. You lose, Zombie Junior. Now you’re part of the herd.”
“It’s called a mob,” Heath corrected him. “Just because they’re sick doesn’t mean they’re cattle. The proper term for a group of zombies is mob.” Heath knew immediately he’d sounded harsher than he’d meant to, but Dunbar had struck a nerve. People were still people and deserve to be treated with dignity, whether they were dead like zombies or just really sick like—
“Okay, relax!” Dunbar laughed. “Don’t give yourself a wedgie over it. Fine, they’re a mob. Whatever. Now hit the deck.”
Heath sighed and drew two more cards, per the rules. Why he bothered to eat lunch while playing such a gross game was beyond him. He wrapped the uneaten portion of his chicken salad sandwich, which was most of it, into a napkin and slipped it into the pocket of his swim trunks for later. There was something liberating about wearing swim trunks all day, every day. It was one more reason on a long list of reasons why Heath loved summer camp.
>
“Not hungry, Heath?” Cricket asked.
“Not really.”
“You look a little pale. You okay?” asked Dunbar.
“Yeah, sure,” Heath replied, but a flash of prickly pain jabbed at the base of his neck, and the reflexive wince gave him away.
Dunbar squinted at him like he was trying to peer through Heath’s skin to examine his insides. “You don’t look fine.”
“It’s nothing,” Heath lied. “I pulled a muscle waterskiing yesterday.” He redirected their focus back to the cards. “I stink at this game. If the human race is ever plagued by a zombie apocalypse, I’ll probably end up as people chow in two minutes or less. I’m just not the skull-crushing, head-chopping type. I guess it’s lucky for me it’ll never happen for real.”
Cricket’s eyes grew owlishly wide. “Oh, it could definitely happen. In fact, there’s a species of carpenter ant in Thailand that—”
Dunbar snorted. “Here we go again.”
Cricket’s real name was Kevin, but he’d earned his camp nickname for his encyclopedic knowledge of all things bug related. If it skittered on six legs and ruined picnics, Cricket was on a scientific name basis with it. His hobby had earned him a reputation for being the creepy kid at Camp Harmony, but Heath was fond of Cricket and was amused by the way he connected all of life’s experiences to the insect world.
“Shut it, Dunbar,” Cricket huffed. “Do you want to hear about zombie ants or not?”
“Not really,” Dunbar said dryly, “but go ahead.”
“Okay, then,” Cricket continued. “In the jungles of Thailand there’s a species of fungus that invades the bodies of carpenter ants.” He scissored two fingers to impersonate ant legs walking across his pickle slice. “The fungus creeps into the ant’s brain, overriding control of its central nervous system. Basically, it turns the ant into a tiny zombie.” Cricket shuddered in mock horror, then picked up the pickle and took a crunching bite. “The fungus forces the ant to leave its colony, find a nice leaf—the perfect breeding ground for the fungus—and bite down on the underside of it. The ant dies because the fungus won’t let it open its jaws again.”
Dunbar shivered spastically like he’d just sucked on a lemon. “Ew! Your bug stories get more disgusting every day.”
“I don’t know,” said Heath. “That giant hornet from Japan he told us about yesterday—the one that sprays flesh-melting poison. That was worse, I think.”
“And don’t forget the bullet ant from Nicaragua that jumps out of trees and shrieks before it bites you.” Dunbar tossed a Cheeto at Heath’s shoulder. “That one gets my nomination.”
“All I’m saying”—Cricket picked the Cheeto off the ground, dusted it off, and popped it into his mouth—“is that maybe someday humans will be plagued by a fungus that turns us into zombies, too, just like it does to those ants.”
A caterpillar crawled across the picnic table toward Heath’s elbow. He considered flicking it away, but rather than risk upsetting Cricket, he moved his arm off the table instead. While Cricket jabbered on about the zombie ants, Heath turned his attention to the far end of the airy picnic pavilion where two fellow campers were sitting at a table, setting up a chess game. One of the boys, Will Stringer, was Heath’s cabinmate, although they’d barely exchanged two words since the camp session started. Will was the same medium height and lean build as Heath, but their coloring was drastically different. Heath was flaxen-haired with a year-round surfer tan while Will’s skin was nearly as pale as Cricket’s, his hair as black as a crow’s feathers. But Will’s eyes were his most remarkable feature. They were technically blue, but such a pale shade that on first glance they almost looked white, as if the pigment had been leeched from his irises. They were icy. Maybe that explained why Will’s gaze always made him shiver.
Cricket stole a second Cheeto from Dunbar’s plate and gnawed on it in a very bug-like fashion before finishing his nauseating story. “Once the ant sinks its jaws into the leaf and dies, the fungus—and this is the best part—sprouts upward, straight out of the ant’s head like a tiny stalk of corn, growing spores from the tip of the stalk. Those spores attract even more ants, starting the cycle all over again. It’s a beautiful thing, don’t you think?”
Dunbar rolled his eyes. “Dude, our ideas of beauty could not be more different. Now Emma Barnes on the other hand…that’s beauty.”
“Emily’s prettier,” Cricket said with authority, as if he were the camp’s expert on hotties. He plunked down a card with an image of a zombie getting shot through the side of his head with a nail gun.
“You’re stupid,” Dunbar snorted. He rolled the dice, chuckled at the outcome, and handed the nail-gun card back to Cricket. “How could Emily be prettier? They’re identical twins.”
“I can tell the difference,” Cricket insisted. “Emily’s nose leans slightly to the left.”
“Not this again,” Heath groaned.
“So a crooked beak makes Emily prettier than Emma? Then come closer and I’ll make you prettier, too.” For the third time that week, Dunbar and Cricket bickered over which of the Em and Em Twins was the more attractive. A debate that Heath thought was pointless, since neither of Camp Harmony’s most-prized bachelorettes would ever give him or his socially challenged friends the time of day. Girls just weren’t into zombies or insects. And they definitely weren’t into guys who liked that stuff. This was, in Heath’s opinion, a blessing. He thought Cricket’s story about the ants was a good analogy for the twins, because, like the zombie fungus, once the Ems got into your head, they pretty much owned you.
Heath quickly lost interest in the argument and gazed out at the beautiful scenery. On the east side of the picnic pavilion he could see the sprawling campground. In the forefront were the main lodge, the mess hall, and the camp director’s residence. Past these buildings he could just make out the tail end of the string of cabins (all named for birds found in the state of Washington). On the opposite side of the pavilion, he had a great view of the perpetually green Dray River and the picturesque Cascade Mountains beyond. The Dray was, for the most part, a shallow, peaceful river, snaking its way slowly through the Skagit Valley. Its gurgling waters glistened like an emerald necklace in the summer sun. The river slowed and deepened alongside Camp Harmony, forming a waist-deep pool, and while most campers preferred to swim in Lake Tupso, a mile hike to the east, Heath favored the Dray. He enjoyed the feel of the gentle current tugging at his body. In the river there was more than a feeling of weightlessness. There was a feeling of lift.
It reminded him of his favorite book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where the author had meant for the river to represent freedom from life’s troubles. The very first time Heath submerged in the Dray’s soothing waters he felt all his anxieties drain away. Then and there he decided that Mark Twain was a pretty smart guy. The Dray did feel like freedom.
“Checkmate!” Heath heard Will declare from the other end of the pavilion. He’d beaten his opponent in less than ten minutes. Impressive. The loser stood up, retrieved something from his pocket, and slapped it angrily into Will’s outstretched hand. Then he turned and flounced away. Will inspected his prize. From a distance it looked to Heath like an extra-large pocket watch. Will turned it over in his hand admiringly before setting it down on the table next to the chessboard.
Chess wasn’t a game Heath played often, but he liked it way more than Zombie Buffet. “I’ll see you guys later,” he told his friends, sliding his remaining cards into the bottom of the deck, but they were too busy arguing about the Ems to notice he’d left. He strolled over to Will and sat down on the opposite side of the chessboard. “How about a game?”
“Sure. What have you got?” Will asked. “I don’t teach chess for free.”
“I didn’t realize this would be a lesson.”
“You will.” Will held up a compass—the thing Heath had assumed was a pocket watch. “
If you beat me, you can have this.”
Heath shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t have anything on me. Except half a chicken salad sandwich.”
“Pass.”
“I’ve got a few things back at our cabin. A pair of sunglasses…a can of tennis balls…a book—”
“What’s it about?” Will’s interest piqued.
“Genghis Khan,” Heath replied. “He was the leader of the Mongols. He and his army tried to breach the Great Wall of China back in—”
“I know who Genghis Khan is. The book is acceptable.”
Will set up the board. Once the game started he wasted no time. He began collecting Heath’s pieces almost immediately. Eight moves in and Heath was forced to sacrifice his queen to avoid being put into check. He attempted to initiate small talk, but Will ignored him, so he quickly stopped trying. Heath was looking for a way to save his knight when Will finally broke the silence.
“You’re losing because you’re not thinking ahead.”
“Believe me, I’m trying,” Heath said with a laugh.
“If you play more often, you won’t have to try,” Will told him, his tone dripping with arrogance.
Heath considered himself to be a fairly smart kid—he got mostly As in school. But he could tell Will was a genius. The type to make sure that everyone knew it.
“Your brain is a computer,” Will told him, “but you’re responsible for programming it. It’s powerful though. If you play enough chess, you’ll train it to see several moves in advance. It’ll just happen. You’ll find patterns—options.”
“How long have you been playing?”
“Every day since I was four years old,” Will told him. He moved his bishop diagonally into battle. “The game seeps into all areas of your life. You start to see the world as your opponent and to not only anticipate the attacks it throws against you, but to counter and beat them as well.”
“Huh,” was all Heath said in reply. He wasn’t sure he agreed. He knew firsthand there were some things life throws at you that you just can’t prepare for.
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