App of the Living Dead

by App of the Living Dead (retail) (epub)

  “Here we are,” Willa said a few minutes later.

  The old police station was short and squat and looked like a gray concrete Lego. I don’t know what I expected. Sirens? People running in and out? Instead, it looked deadly quiet.

  My shoulders sagged. I had a bad feeling about this. “Let’s head in.”

  As soon as we walked through the front door, I knew things were not good. Mostly because the dispatcher was a zombie. But I’m good like that with obvious clues.

  She had a big poof of pale blonde hair piled high on her head and wore a zip-up Wolcott fleece jacket. She leaned forward, jaws snapping at the air, but for some reason she wasn’t lunging out of her seat and charging at us.

  “Look,” Willa said, pointing down. “Someone handcuffed her to the leg of the desk.”

  Thank you, brave soul. Now that I didn’t have to worry about her eating my face, I could take a look around. She had a couple of phones on her desk, both off the hook, with multiple lines that were all blinking red. That was why the calls to 911 weren’t getting through—there was no human here to answer them. Chairs and papers were strewn about. Shards from a smashed coffeepot were scattered over the floor.

  “Looks like there was a struggle,” I said, “and everyone took off.”

  “Not everyone.” Willa motioned to the back of the room where a zombie police officer lay on the floor, writhing but unable to do much more because he was also handcuffed to his desk leg.

  Willa raised her eyebrows, impressed. “Someone was smart and brave enough to handcuff these two zombies before taking off.”

  “Too bad everyone in town couldn’t be handcuffed to something,” I muttered.

  The groaning zombie on the floor had a bunch of foamy spittle in his mustache that was majorly grossing me out, so I searched the room for clues. Either there had been a chair-throwing competition or a few police officers turned into zombies and scared the others off.

  I stopped at a desk with a nameplate that said Detective Palamidis. His or her appointment calendar was open on the computer and one word caught my eye. Veratrum.

  3:00 P.M. Veratrum emp—whistleblower?

  “Hey, Willa. Check this out. This detective was supposed to meet a Veratrum employee today.” I read over the entry again. “What’s a whistleblower?” I pictured someone whose job was to walk around the office dressed like a gym teacher and blow a whistle to keep people awake in their cubicles.

  Willa squinted at the screen. “I saw a documentary on that once. Whistleblowers are employees who find out something bad about their company and go to the authorities.”

  My heart sped up a bit. “So someone was going to tell on Veratrum today?”

  “Yeah, but tell what?”

  That Veratrum had plans to zombify the whole town? Would they have really done that on purpose? And why? Whatever the whistleblower had to say, it seemed to be too late. Veratrum had gone so far this time, Wolcott might never be saved.

  Mustache Zombie made a gross, guttural sound. I felt bad for him, rolling around on the floor like that, his arm connected to the desk. He looked like a living nightmare right now but underneath he was a human being. Maybe even a human with information about this so-called whistleblower meeting.

  “Should we play the game and cure the two of them?” I asked.

  Willa looked unsure. “We don’t know what’s wrong with Marcus.”

  I shrugged. “It can’t be any worse than zombie-ism.”

  “True. And if it doesn’t work, they’ll still won’t be a risk. If zombies can’t open doors, they certainly can’t unlock handcuffs.”

  I pointed. “I’ll take mustache man and you cure the dispatcher. You’ll have to install the game first.”

  She frowned. “But I’m not allowed to download large files unless I’m on Wi-Fi.”

  “I think your parents will forgive you for going over your data cap this month with the zombie apocalypse and all.”

  “You don’t know how strongly my parents feel about our data cap.”

  I threw my hands up. “Just download it already!”

  Willa installed the game and walked back to the dispatcher while I focused on Mustache Zombie. I clicked on Zombie Town and waited for the creepy opening logo and music to pass. Then I aimed my sights.

  “Ready to be cured?” I asked.

  Mustache Zombie growled in response.

  It was much easier when the zombie was trapped on the floor and I didn’t feel like I was in danger. With one swipe, I landed the cure on my first try.

  Just moments later, Mustache Zombie stopped writhing and groaning. His eyes turned from gray to green. Unfortunately, his bushy mustache remained intact.

  I cleared my throat. “Hi, Mustache, um, I mean . . . what’s your name?”

  “Matt.” He blinked slowly. “What happened?”

  I knelt down beside him. “What do you remember?”

  “I was feeling sick. A whole bunch of us were. Pam had been throwing up for a while but felt too sick to even go home. And then she . . . she changed into something. There was screaming and fighting.” His voice drifted off.

  “Do you remember how you came to be handcuffed to this desk?”

  “Not really, no.” His eyes closed and he began to breathe deeply and slowly, like he was asleep.

  “Sir.” I gently pushed on his chest to wake him up. “Matt!”

  His eyes opened again, but only halfway. “I’ve never been this tired in all my life.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably going to take a long nap soon. I just need you to stay with me for a few more minutes.”

  He nodded once and his eyes half-closed.

  “Do you have keys to get yourself out of these cuffs when you’re not so tired anymore?”

  “In my pocket,” he croaked.

  “Okay, one last question and then you can sleep. Detective Palamidis was supposed to meet a Veratrum employee today. Do you know anything about that?”

  He moved his head a bit from side to side. “No.”

  “Do you know where I can find Detective Palamidis?”

  “Started all of this,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Pam. Detective Palamidis is Pam.”

  The detective who might have some answers was the first police officer to turn into a zombie.

  The dispatcher Willa cured was no help, either. She fell into a deep sleep almost immediately. Then Charlie texted that his house was still empty, and Marcus had a safe place to sleep for a while, so we decided to head there.

  “Well, that was a dead end,” Willa said, holding the police station door open for me. “Get it? Dead end? Because zombies are—”

  “I get it.” I eyeballed her. “Are you taking Charlie’s place with dumb jokes?”

  “Someone has to lighten things up.” She stepped over a random, lost shoe. “Why are you so pessimistic about all this? You weren’t like this last time.”

  “Um, because my town is filled with zombies?”

  “But it had been filled with monsters and aliens, too, and we fixed that.”

  “Let’s just head to Charlie’s.” I hated this feeling I was carrying inside me. That anything that could go wrong would. But I couldn’t snap my fingers and make the feeling go away.

  Willa started walking down Main Street, but I stopped her.

  “We should cut through the common. It’s a wide open space. We’ll be able to see any threats easier.” I thought about all the zombies stuck in Bodhi’s Diner and knew lots of those little stores were probably keeping some zombies trapped. I didn’t want to be surprised by an open door and a zombie horde.

  “Sure,” Willa said, hopping off the sidewalk onto the street. “We could even walk in the middle of the road. I haven’t seen one car pass!”

  The late afternoon sun moved lower in the sky as we strode toward the common. A golden retriever ran by us, not even stopping to get pet. Understandably. A scream echoed from some distance away. I hated seeing the town I lo
ved turned into this apocalyptic wasteland. Actually, it had only been a day, so the flowers were still pretty and the pumpkins on the stoops were fresh. But still.

  “The coast looks clear,” Willa said as we reached the common.

  I pointed at the playground. “That swing is moving. Like someone walking by just bumped it.”

  “Probably the wind.”

  I chewed on my lower lip, unsure. “Okay, let’s cut through.”

  My eyes moved left and right, and every now and then I looked over my shoulder. I didn’t want to be taken by surprise. I had the game open on my phone so I could toss a cure quickly, but my battery was low. I hadn’t known when I left the house this morning that I’d be using up my battery power to cure zombies around town.

  Willa cut a straight path through the middle of the common.

  “Let’s bear right,” I said. I wanted to keep space between us and the gazebo. A zombie could be hiding in there. We were better off heading a little bit right, toward the statue of John Wolcott, our town’s founder.

  As we passed the gazebo, I squinted at the shadows inside. Nothing.

  “See?” Willa said. “It’s fine. Things aren’t as bad as they seem. Most of the zombies are stuck inside because they can’t open doors.”

  Maybe she was right and my bad feeling was wrong. Maybe we’d make it home with no problem. Maybe—

  “Guuuuuuuuuhhhh.”

  I froze in place.

  A shadow crept across the grass as a large someone—or something—came out from behind the statue. It was zombie Jason! Charlie’s brother was two years older than we were and twice our size. His blond buzz cut and Wolcott Football sweatshirt looked the same, but that gray-eyed gaze and drooling mouth were dead giveaways.

  “Launch!” I yelled.

  “I’m opening the game!” Willa cried. “It’ll just be a minute.”

  I lifted up my phone, game open, ready to attack the zombie with a cure. And the screen went black. The battery!

  I gasped in horror. “My phone is dead.” And soon I would be, too. Or . . . undead.

  Zombie Jason lurched toward me, eyes alight with ravenous hunger. I remembered a ballet move Willa had used before to trip an evil alien. I stretched my leg out and connected with Jason’s shin. He lost his balance, toppling to the ground. But his arm reached out, grabbing my ankle, and he brought me down with him.

  Willa always was much better than I was at dance moves.

  Caught in his tight grip, I squirmed and screamed. “Hurry, Willa!”

  “I’m coming!” she said and aimed.

  The red light arced out of her phone and landed on Jason’s leg. He looked down at the spot and growled, mildly irritated, but not enough to let go of my leg. His eyes flared with hunger as he pulled me closer. His jaws snapped like an angry dog.

  “Aim for the head!” I yelled. “Come on, Willa.”

  “I’m trying. I’m new at this!”

  The only bad thing about our pact to not play Zombie Town was that now that we needed it, we all had a learning curve—one that could end with me becoming a Jason Tepper appetizer.

  Willa launched another cure that landed somewhere in the grass beside us. It didn’t help that I was writhing and squirming and Jason was moving to try to sink his teeth into me. But I wasn’t going to lie still!

  Another red light went sailing over our heads. Jason was so close now, his teeth only inches from my ankle.

  And BAM! Direct hit.

  Jason’s grip on me relaxed, and I scrambled back up to standing. My breath came in ragged bursts.

  “Sorry that took so long,” Willa said.

  “It’s okay. You got him just in time.”

  My ankle throbbed where he’d been squeezing it. But it could have been a lot worse.

  Jason slowly sat up, rubbing his eyes like a child awakening from a nap. “Bex? Where’s my brother?”

  I gripped his arm, which was the size of my leg, and helped him to his feet. “Charlie is at your house, where you need to be ASAP.”

  He swayed a bit. “I’m really tired.”

  Willa grabbed his other arm. “I know you’re tired. And it’s only going to get worse. But you need to stay awake until you get home because we can’t carry you.”

  “Carry me,” he said, confused. “Why would you carry—”

  “Whoa there!” I said as he staggered. I put both hands on his shoulders to keep him from falling facedown. “We’ll tell you all about it on the way.”

  Willa gave me a look. “We have to make it fast.”

  We slogged up the Teppers’ driveway, Jason clinging to consciousness between us.

  “Charlie, get your butt out here!” Willa shrieked.

  The front door opened and a surprised Charlie dashed out to help us. “Jason! You’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” Jason slurred. “Bex and Willa cured me, or whatever. But I need my bed. I need my bed right now.”

  It took the three of us to get him upstairs to his room. At the sight of his big, comfy bed, Jason sighed, said, “Finally,” and fell face first into a pillow.

  Charlie took his sneakers off, and the resulting smell drove us back downstairs pretty quickly. We collapsed into chairs around the dining room table. Charlie poured us glasses of water, which Willa and I chugged heartily. Getting Jason home had been quite the workout.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “How’s Marcus?”

  “Still sleeping in my room,” Charlie said.

  That worried me. What if the cure was some kind of Sleeping Beauty disease? What if Marcus slept forever?

  “What should we do now?” Charlie asked, directing his question at me like I had a clue.

  Willa clutched her stomach. “We should eat dinner.”

  At the mention of it, my stomach growled in response. I would give anything for one of my dad’s big meals right now. My heart sank as I thought about his silly aprons and my mom losing her glasses when they were on the top of her head. How could you miss people so much when you just saw them yesterday?

  “I can make spaghetti,” Charlie said. He stood and started opening cabinets. “Yep, I have everything I need.”

  I forced a smile. “That would be great. Thanks.”

  Willa beamed. “Thanks, Charlie. You’re the best.”

  While Charlie boiled water to cook the pasta, I charged my phone, and Willa called her house. I could hear her mother’s frantic voice through the speaker, but Willa did a good job calming her down.

  It hurt to think about my parents as zombies, wandering about town somewhere, their brains clicked off. I had to save them. I had to figure out a way.

  “Just don’t let Dad back in unless his eyes are brown again,” Willa said to her mother. “Keep all the doors locked and you’ll be fine.”

  After a muffled question, Willa answered, “Yeah, I’ll sleep at Bex’s. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

  She ended the call and groaned.

  “How are they?” I asked.

  “My mom and my little brothers are fine but my dad turned. She pushed him outside with a broom. I told her to stay in and keep the doors locked.”

  I nodded. “They’ll be safe.”

  “She doesn’t want me crossing town to get back home so I’m going to stay at your house. Cool?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Charlie put down the spoon he’d been stirring the sauce with. “You guys are free to stay here. We’d be safer all together.”

  Willa grimaced. “If I stayed overnight at a boy’s house with no parents, a zombie attack would pale in comparison to what I’d face at home.”

  “Point taken,” Charlie said and poured the spaghetti into a strainer.

  The meal Charlie spread out was pretty good—spaghetti and sauce, bread and butter, and cookies for dessert. I leaned back in the chair after I finished and patted my happy belly.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I needed this.”

  “I can make us all some French toast in the morning
, too,” Charlie offered.

  “That would be great,” Willa said, but her voice trailed off as she stared at something out the window.

  I looked over my shoulder. My neighbor, Mrs. Sweeney, staggered down the street in what was now an easily recognizable zombie fashion.

  “Poor Mrs. Sweeney.” I moved to get up.

  Charlie put a hand on my arm. “It’s almost dark. It’s not safe to run around curing people. Let’s wait.”

  He was right. But it still felt awful to watch her wandering aimlessly. I wondered what her dog, William Shakespaw, had thought when his beloved owner turned into a zombie.

  Willa chewed on her thumbnail. “At least they aren’t like movie zombies. You know, limbs falling off, skin decaying.”

  “That will come with time,” Charlie said.

  I leaned forward. “What?”

  “They’ve only been zombies for a day or so. What do you think will happen if we don’t cure them soon?”

  Gross. But he was right. Nature would take its toll eventually. All I could think about were my parents—slowly decaying faces, eyes dropping out, arms falling off. I pressed my fingers into my temples and forced myself to stop picturing these horrible images.

  Willa stood and started piling up dishes. “We should head to your house before it gets too dark.”

  I agreed and scrubbed dishes, wishing I could scrub my mind. After we finished helping Charlie, we headed outside.

  Willa took a long look at the decorations strewn across my front yard. “It looks like Halloween threw up on your grass.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I unlocked the front door and poked my head in. “Hello?”

  “Who are you talking to?” Willa whispered. “Your zombie parents aren’t here, right?”

  No, they weren’t. And the doors had all been closed so no new zombies could get in. Still, it felt like we weren’t alone. We crept into the living room, closing the front door behind us. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was off. There was a chill in the air, and I felt a tickle down my back.

  And then my blood froze in my veins.

  I’d left the living room window open when I dashed out this morning. That had let cool autumn air in, and sometime since then someone or something had pushed in the screen. When a noise came from the kitchen, it confirmed my worst fear.