Sludgment Day

by John Kloepfer

  “Good morning, Zacky-poo,” said Zoe. “Care for some of Orville’s finest butter-free popcorn?”

  “It’s the only kind I can eat,” Madison said. “I mean, veganly speaking.”

  “Where are the Ho-Hos?” Zack wiped a little crustball of sleep from his eye.

  “All gone,” Zoe said.

  “What are you talking about?” said Zack. “We had four boxes.”

  “Talk to your boy,” Madison said. Rice and Ozzie came through the door into the back of the Winnebago, glossy with sweat from their morning workout.

  “Ugh,” Rice said, clutching at a cramp in his side. “Being a ninja is hard.”

  “It’s a lot of work,” Ozzie said, relaxing on the floor with his cast elevated on one of the seats. “But you’ll get there, Rice. You’ve got the love.”

  “Is it as hard as eating four boxes of Ho-Hos?” Zack challenged him.

  “I only ate two.” Rice defended himself. “Zoe ate the rest.”

  Zack glared at his sister.

  Zoe shrugged her shoulders. “I was hungry.”

  “Whatever,” Zack said. “You guys ready to hit the road?”

  “Ready like Freddy.”

  “Just let me know when we get to Duplessis,” Zoe said, pulling a sleep mask down over her eyes. “I need my beauty rest.”

  “Yeah, you do.” Rice snickered.

  Zoe belted him in the head with a pillow.

  Ozzie started the engine. “Which way am I going?” he asked.

  “Hold on.” Rice Google-mapped the BurgerDog ranch on his new iPhone and then pointed down the westbound highway.

  Ozzie pulled back onto the interstate, and a cloud of dirt swirled up from the tires as the Winnebago shot into the badlands of Montana.

  CHAPTER

  They drove for hours toward the rugged chain of mountains in the distance before finally spotting an access road on the outskirts of the BurgerDog cattle ranch. “You guys, I think this is it,” Rice said, looking at his smartphone.

  They hung a right and found themselves driving through an endless grid of cooped-up cattle. Behind the industrial fencing, cows roamed everywhere, mooing and cawing. But as they moved deeper into the ranchland, Zack got a closer look at Duplessis’s bovine hogs.

  The genetically engineered animals had big pig noses with horned cow heads, fat pig bodies with cow fur, and long curly cow tails. The mutated beasts snuffled and stamped the dirt with their hooves. Some of them had two snouts sprouting out of the same head with one Cyclops eye between them.

  “Ew, little bro.” Zoe gagged. “You ate one of those things.”

  “I have a feeling I’m not going to like this place,” said Madison.

  Beyond the front gates of BurgerDog headquarters, a swarm of zombie people mingled with undead livestock.

  Ozzie guided the Winnebago down a side road that curved around the main complex. He slowed to a stop beside a large square blue warehouse.

  “Put your game faces on.” Ozzie shut off the engine and hopped out.

  They geared up, donning helmets and pads and arming themselves with bludgeons and bats. At the rear entrance next to the loading docks, a keycard scanner glowed with a tiny red dot next to the locked door. “Wait here,” Zack said and ran toward the fence, where a BurgerDog factory worker clung with both hands on the other side of the chain-link.

  “Thank you… Mr. Pendleton,” Zack said, plucking off the ID tag clipped to the foreman’s breast pocket.

  “Zack, look out!” Rice yelled to his buddy.

  Zack glanced around the zombie’s girth and saw a genetically mutated bovine hog charging straight for him. Zack jumped back as the undead livestock rammed into Mr. Pendleton and then toppled the fence posts. Zack took off for the access door as the foreman and the cow-pig lumbered toward him over the fallen chain-link fence.

  Zack swiped the keycard and the red dot blipped green.

  “Here we go.” Zoe plugged her nose and stepped across the threshold.

  The emergency lights flickered and snapped as the whole gang lurked through the dimly lit corridor. Straight ahead, a Siamese zombie cow-pig conjoined at the skull with two separate bodies—one all pig, one completely cow—scrabbled toward them on eight legs like a giant mammalian spider. The half-hog-half-heifer’s heads were fused together into one horrific honking mutant cattle.

  “Okey-dokey,” Madison said queasily. “Other way!”

  They scurried down another cement-reinforced hallway, pushing deeper and deeper into the compound. A dense mass of zombies ticked spasmodically toward them. Cattle ranchers in Stetsons, BurgerDog meat packers in white hard hats, factory workers wearing hairnets and dust masks stumbled mindlessly in different directions, raking the air with their lethal claws.

  Zack screeched to a stop as the zombies cast their reptilian eyes upon them, gargling on juicy intakes of slime.

  “Over here!” Ozzie shouted, and they ran through a series of identical corridors until they came to a door labeled TESTING LEVEL D.

  They pushed through the swinging doors and found themselves standing on a high narrow deck, ten feet above the floor of a huge room. Below them, conveyer belts ran on zigzags like moving sidewalks. Yellow-and-black-striped caution levers jutted out of the smooth, high cement walls. Forklifts with pallets stacked with boxes upon boxes of unrefrigerated beef patties lay spilled on the floor.

  Behind them, the automatic doors parted, and zombie food scientists, cattle ranchers, and meat packers stumbled inside, tumbling onto the platform.

  The gang raced around the catwalk, down a ladder, and onto a lower level. Ahead, a set of stairs leading to the plant floor was covered in pork-beef slime. The BurgerDog patties were twitching and squirming off the conveyer belts worming along the floor.

  The legion of undead factory employees and cattle ranchers began to topple down the staircase like a waterfall of walking corpses, spilling undead-over-heels to the production level.

  “Go!” Zack shouted. Ozzie led the way, swinging on his crutches to the ground floor.

  Under the conveyor belts, the scraps of raw meat quivered and jiggled, clumping together and inching toward a common point. In the center of the room, a massive blob of rotting meat-flesh pulsated on the ground like a cocoon.

  They all stopped dead in their tracks. Zoe covered her mouth and nose, ready to hurl. Twinkles sniffed the bulging ball of meat and made a sour face. Zack looked back at the zombies closing in behind them.

  The beefy blob started to grow, sculpting itself up into an eight-foot-tall tongue-shaped glob. The hunk of BurgerDog chuck then sprouted crude appendages made entirely of the mange-mottled meat. Rice stared silently, in awe of the humongous zombie meatball.

  “I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say that’s the nastiest freakin’ thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Ozzie said as the green maggoty meat monster stomped toward them, one foot forward like a Claymation Beefzilla.

  “Let’s get the heck out of here!” Zack yelled, taking off for the other side of the room. A yellow forklift blocked the emergency exit door.

  The zombified BurgerDog employees staggered across the room, flanking the meat behemoth.

  “Owwwww!” Rice howled. “Something bit me!”

  “Nothing bit you!” Zack shouted, losing his patience.

  “I’m serious this time,” said the boy who cried zombie. Rice bent over and lifted his pantleg. “Gah!” A piece of BurgerDog meat in the shape of a slug sucked at his skin like a leech. Rice plucked the thing off with a pop.

  “Ew, Rice!” Madison cringed and covered her eyes. Zack watched as a thick runnel of black blood streamed down Rice’s calf.

  He wasn’t faking.

  “Whoa!” Ozzie yelled, and pointed behind him at the zombie meat man. Three long phalanges of beef branched out of the arms. The toxic meat monster swung its new hands through the air, probing with its tentacles.

  “Rice, let’s get out of—” Zack started to say when an ugly spasm crosse
d his buddy’s face.

  “Dude,” Rice looked him dead in the eyes, whispering feebly. “Turning into a zombie is way less cool than I thought it would be…” Rice’s eyes rolled back, and he started to keel over.

  “Hey!” Zack caught his undying buddy and dropped to one knee. Rice slumped over Zack’s leg.

  He was dead weight.

  CHAPTER

  “Come on, Zack!” Zoe screamed. “We had to get the heck out of here, like, five minutes ago!”

  “The meat dude’s gonna eat us!” Madison yelled. “This is so not how I’m supposed to die.”

  The BurgerDog meat man stomped forward, its huge beefy feet squelching with every stride. The zombified workforce raged around the boneless meat monster towering above them. The inhuman moan was a deafening, deep-throated bellowing.

  Zack unslung Rice’s arms from the shoulder straps of his backpack and propped him up to a seated position.

  “You’re not giving him the antidote!” Zoe said.

  “I’m not,” Zack said. “But we can’t leave him. Gimme a hand.”

  Zoe and Madison helped Zack lug Rice through the door, while Ozzie hopped into the seat of a forklift and turned on the motor.

  The great Globzilla took a long step toward the exit and catapulted its meaty arm at the door.

  Ozzie lined the vehicle up and raised the forklift as high as it would go. He hit the gas pedal and zoomed into the meat giant full force. Zack watched from the doorway as Ozzie rammed the forklift into the wall, splattering the mammoth meat man to pieces.

  “Ozzie!” Zack shouted, holding the door for his friend. “Hurry up!” With the zombies surging behind him, Ozzie hop-stepped through the exit on his crutches, and the door slammed behind them.

  Outside in the hall, a nasty rash spread quickly up Rice’s neck. He began to look pale, then white, and finally yellow.

  “Give him some ginkgo!” Ozzie suggested.

  “Not yet,” Zack said. “We don’t want to have to drag him.”

  Rice’s zombified eyes popped open, and Zack quickly snapped the chinstrap on his buddy’s helmet, pulling it tight and secure over his snarling face.

  Zack led Rice by their old dog leash as they slowly made their way through the labyrinth of hallways. In front of them, an undead cattle rancher lurched around the corner. “Blargh!” Ozzie poked his crutch at the ground like a garbage picker, threading it through the gap between the zombie’s legs. The six-foot-six brawny beast tripped to the floor with a bone-crunching splat.

  “Come on, Rice!” They urged their buddy on. Rice snarled and staggered forward a little faster.

  They made a quick left and hustled down an empty corridor with an EXIT sign marking the end. Zoe ran ahead and flung open the door. “Hurry! They’re coming!” she screamed.

  Two separate herds of zombies were converging on their only escape route. Behind them, an undead herd of bovine hogs clomped around the corner.

  It was all or nothing.

  “Come on, Rice!” Zack yanked his zombified friend so hard that Rice fell facemask-first to the floor. Madison grabbed the leash now, too, and she and Zack tug-of-warred backward down the hall as fast as they could.

  “Blaaaahhhhh!” The factory zombies clashed in front of the exit just as Rice’s feet dragged across the doorstep. The emergency door slammed shut. Outside the factory, they all grabbed their knees, gasping for breath.

  Zack glanced up and spotted a white clapboard mansion built into the mountain cliff peak. “Up there!” he shouted as the lunatic meat packers busted through the exit.

  Twinkles took off ahead, and Zack, Zoe, Madison, Ozzie, and zombie Rice followed, trudging up the one-lane mountain road. Zack dragged Rice along, making sure he didn’t wander off the edge. He watched as a beard of slime dribbled from his undead buddy’s chin.

  Behind them the flesh-eating nincompoops spiraled up the mountain.

  At the top, the mansion tapered out from the natural rock of the mountain peak. To the left of the colonial housetop, a long, rectangular second-story window stretched across a wall of stone. It looked like some type of laboratory.

  Zack dropped Rice’s leash and raced up the steps of the mansion. He pressed the button on the intercom. No answer. “Duplessis, open up!” he called out.

  “Hey!” Ozzie pointed up to the laboratory window. Someone was gazing down at them.

  “It’s the health department,” Zack spoke again into the speaker. “We’ve had some complaints.” And just like that, the man ran out of view.

  They stood on the stoop of the mansion, watching as the zombies lumbered around the final bend.

  “Is he coming?” Zoe asked.

  “How am I supposed to know?” Zack shrugged.

  Rice grabbed Zoe by the arm and tried to bite her through the facemask. She whapped him hard in the helmet and he let go. “Bad Rice!”

  Zack and Ozzie split off in opposite directions, pulling up on all the windows. Madison and Zoe banged on the door, screaming and ringing the doorbell. Rice was moaning and groaning, too, but for different reasons.

  The zombie masses were now less than twenty yards away.

  “What do we do?” Madison asked.

  The undead laborers plodded slowly up the driveway when the peep slot on the door shot open. A pair of eyes peered outside. “Oh dear,” said the voice.

  “Let us in, mister!” Zack shouted.

  The chain jangled and the bolt clacked. The door opened slightly. They all pushed quickly inside past the man and slammed the door.

  Thaddeus Duplessis was short and wore a crisp white lab coat. On his head, a thatch of black hair with gray streaks tufted up and out to the sides. It looked like three skunks were sitting on his head with their tails up. Strapped to his forehead were a pair of goggles that made him look like some kind of four-eyed insect.

  “Whoa.” Madison bulged her eyes. “Nerd alert.”

  Duplessis peered out through the peephole at the zombies coming toward the house. “What have you done?” He whipped his head around. “You’ve set them free!”

  “What have we done? What have you done?” Zoe grabbed the guilty geneticist by the lapel of his lab coat with two fists. “Because of you, I’m going to have a permanent scar right here.” She pointed to her forehead. “And here, and here, and here.” She shoved the man away, and he knocked back into the wall.

  “Yeah, buddy. You’ve got some serious explaining to do,” Ozzie said. “My dad got his arm ripped off because of you.”

  “And our parents got zombified,” Zack said.

  “And I don’t even know where my family is.” Madison cocked her eyebrow.

  “And neither does Rice,” Zack added. Rice snarled and staggered toward the mad scientist. “Easy, Rice…” He pulled his zombified buddy back by the shirt collar.

  Professor Duplessis dropped to his knees and burst into sobs. The grown man cried, blubbering, unable to speak.

  “Get a hold of yourself, man!” Madison marched up to Duplessis and gave him a firm slap across the cheek.

  “Madison!” Ozzie yelled.

  “What?” she said. “It always works in old movies.”

  “Thank you.” Duplessis gathered himself, holding the side of his face. “I needed that.” He stood up and looked at them. “Come with me.”

  The BurgerDog creator walked off, and they followed him into the parlor room. A large birdcage hung from the tall ceiling like a chandelier. “It all started after I accomplished the impossible.” He glanced up and gestured to the top of the cage, where a pot-bellied pig sat high up on the perch. Duplessis produced a treat from his pocket and made a funny pig sound out of the corner of his mouth. The pig leaped off the bird perch and fluttered down, light as a feather, to the floor of the cage.

  “You made a flying pig?” Zack asked.

  “Indeed,” Duplessis said.

  “Why?”

  “Because as the saying goes, ‘When pigs fly…’” A sad smile crossed his face. “Anything i
s possible. It was a test, and I succeeded.”

  “I don’t care about your stupid Dumbo pig,” Zoe told him. “How did the meat turn into zombie burgers?”

  “It’s very complex.” Duplessis sighed. “When we recombined the DNA from cow to pig, we had to use a strain from a third species to complete the genetic vector. Nothing worked until we used the ectoplasm from a newly discovered deep-sea jellyfish.”

  Madison scrunched her face. “Dude, you’re making, like, zero sense.”

  I can’t believe Rice is missing this, Zack mused as Duplessis continued.

  “The life cycle of this particular jellyfish is unlimited due to its magnificent regenerative properties. In other words, it can’t die.

  At first the meat was fine, but then it wasn’t…” Duplessis sighed. “The rest is history.”

  “Well, if we don’t do something,” Zack said, “there won’t be any more history.”

  “Yeah,” Madison said. “It’ll just be itstory.” Twinkles woofed in agreement.

  “All I ever wanted was to make something so delicious that no human being could resist it.” Duplessis looked off wistfully. “The burger that tastes like a hotdog.”

  “Well, why not make something so delicious that no zombie could resist it?” Zack suggested.

  “It could be done, if only there was a way to reverse the zombification…”

  “There is,” Zack said. “And we’ve got it.” He dug around for the last bit of antidote and pulled out the vial.

  “Is this…?” A glimmer of hope flashed in Duplessis’s eye.

  They all nodded yes.

  “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER

  Thaddeus Duplessis led them up a steep staircase and guided them through a maze of corridors. “We’re actually inside the mountain,” Duplessis told them proudly. “From this tunnel system, I can access almost any part of my facility.”