“Be quiet!” Ozzie said as they reached the red double doors of the equipment room. He pulled out a thin metal tool from his pack. “This’ll just take a minute.”
Zack sighed and glanced out across the other sports fields in back of the school. A headless soccer player juggled its missing noggin like a ball. The zombie planted its weak foot and blasted a shot on goal. The decapitated head rocketed off the cleat and doinked the crossbar. It wobbled to a stop on the goal line, and the body crumpled on the damp morning grass. No goal.
“Uhh, Rice? I thought you said they die if you cut their heads off,”
Zack said.
“Errr, I—I can’t explain that one.” Rice stuttered a little. “That’s just weird.” A few minutes later, Zoe tapped her foot and checked an invisible watch on her wrist. Rice yawned. It was way past his sleepytime.
Just then, a low guttural growl gurgled behind them. They turned to see the headless sportsman dribbling its decapitated noggin between its cleats. All of a sudden, the beheaded ghoul chipped its noggin up off the grass. “Blurgle-dahrgh!” The decapitated zombie head lobbed high in the air, heading right toward them, biting its own tongue over and over as it soared overhead.
“Ewww, hurry!” screeched Zoe.
“Got it!” Ozzie cracked the lock.
The door popped open, and Ozzie scurried into the equipment room.
“Get in!” Zack shooed Rice, Zoe, and Twinkles inside, then dove in after them and slammed the door shut.
Zack heard a juicy thud as the flying noggin smacked outside the equipment room and dropped to the ground with a snarl.
Zack flipped the light switch on. The room was zombie free.
“Listen,” said Zoe, gazing at the ceiling.
Tortured moans and zombie howls echoed through the air vents.
“Mom and Dad are up there,” Zoe said solemnly.
“Come on, guys,” Zack said. “We need to get moving,”
They gathered supplies and geared up for the coming battle.
Rice and Zack fitted each other with football shoulder pads and baseball catcher’s vests. Zack uncapped a little tin of baseball grease and wiped a black smudge under each eye. Next, he went over to a wooden barrel filled with assorted baseball bats and picked out a gleaming aluminum Slugger. It was officially his weapon of choice.
Rice put on a lacrosse helmet. “Who am I?” he asked. “‘Zack, blaah, I hate you, blaah, I’m gonna eat you, blaahhhhhh.’” He pointed at Zoe and laughed. “I’m you!”
Zoe unsheathed a hockey stick from another barrel and whapped Rice hard on his helmeted head.
“Guys, get serious,” Ozzie said. He was wearing elbow pads and strapping multiple shin-guards around each calf.
Zack held up two football helmets. He put one on and tossed the other to Ozzie.
“No need,” he said. “But thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Zack practiced his batter’s stance.
Twinkles sniffed a crusty pair of forgotten socks in a dusty corner.
Ozzie pulled a batter’s glove onto each hand and grabbed a field hockey stick. Zoe put on a fresh pair of soccer goalie gloves, clapping her new mitts together. She hopped back in a funny stance like a fighting Irishman and socked Zack in the helmet as hard as she could.
“Oww!” he yelped.
“Put up your dukes, dork!”
“Zoe, knock it off!”
“Wrong choice of words, Broseph.” She punched him again, and his head snapped back. “Hah! Fun-ness.”
On the other side of the room, Rice picked up a red-and-white plastic bullhorn from a box and attached it to his pack. Zack shot his friend a wary glance. “What?” Rice asked. “It might come in handy.”
“You know you have a history with those things….”
“They’re fun,” Rice said innocently. “I mean, useful.”
“You guys ready to roll?” Ozzie asked.
“One second.” Rice finished putting on some knee-pads and grabbed a field hockey stick for himself.
All of a sudden, Zoe shrieked.
She was standing in front of a mirror for the first time since her unzombification. “Eeee-you,” she said quietly, inspecting her reflection. “How can you even look at me? I’m hideous!” Tears streamed down her horrified face.
Zack, Rice, and Ozzie looked at one another and shrugged.
Zoe sniffled and stared off into space. “Someone better tell me I’m beautiful before I pass out,” she said.
Nobody peeped.
“Quick, I’m feeling faint.”
“Uh,” Zack said, “you’re…beautiful?”
“Yeah, Zoe,” Rice said. “You, you’re the prettiest.”
“LIARS!” Zoe screeched. “You liars make me sick.” She pinched and prodded her crusty, curdled face and then took a deep breath. “As long as Ozzie knows that I’m usually way cuter than this…” Then she found a hockey helmet with a tinted visor and put it on to hide her hideousness from the world.
And just like that, they rolled out of the equipment room to rescue Mr. and Mrs. Clarke.
Either that or go clock them in the head.
CHAPTER 8
They navigated cautiously through the dark first floor of the middle school. A soda machine cast a faint red glow at the end of the corridor.
Zack, Zoe, Rice, and Ozzie walked on soft, cat feet across the black-and-white checkered linoleum. Twinkles scampered along, too, but on puppy feet.
All of a sudden the dog froze, sniffed the air, and then took off running.
“Twinkles!” Zack called, chasing after the pup. They caught up with him next to the vending machine, where the janitor’s office door hung slightly ajar. Ozzie kicked it open with his foot. The rusty hinges creaked loudly.
“Dude…,” Zack whispered.
“My bad,” Ozzie said.
“Look, you guys.” Rice pointed from the doorway.
Inside the office, two half-eaten BurgerDog value meals lay open on the desktop. Twinkles pranced happily around the fast food. “The outbreak must have happened inside,” Rice realized.
“Poor parents,” Zoe sympathized. “Where do you think they are?”
“If they are…,” Ozzie added cynically.
“Zack, if you were your parents, where would you be?” Rice asked.
“In the principal’s office,” Zack said with certainty.
“How do you know?”
“It’s the place they visit most often,” Zack explained, recalling all the times his parents had been called there to discuss his extracurricular activities. Like selling horror comics to fifth-graders. Or getting caught with Rice after tipping the Coke machine for free sodas. Or talking too much in Senora G.’s Spanish section. “Maybe your parents are there, too.”
“Makes sense.” Rice nodded, a serious look on his face.
They approached another hallway and turned the corner slowly, tiptoeing toward the cafeteria. Meaty globs of freak tissue were smeared all over the puke-green lockers. The walls were tacked with class projects and school banners, all slathered in some kind of egg-whitey pus.
A student council campaign poster with big bubble letters and money symbols read: VOTE 4 GREG—OR HE’LL BREAK YOUR LEG! It, too, was dripping in slime. In the picture, Greg Bansal-Jones smiled, giving himself two thumbs way up.
Just then, a faint zombie howl reverberated through the shadowy beige hallway. “Did you hear that?” Zoe asked.
The doors to the cafeteria swung back and forth, creaking on their hinges.
Zack smelled the permanent stink of stale milk and old mac-and-cheese wafting into the hall.
“Hello?” Rice whispered as they pushed through the swinging doors. “Zombies?”
The mess hall was a serious mess. Long lunch tables were tipped or pushed at awkward angles, and stacks of plastic chairs were toppled, sculpture-like, around the cafeteria. Racks of unrefrigerated leftovers were knocked over, spilling into spoiled puddles of yesterday’s goulash and bread puddi
ng.
Zack couldn’t believe it.
This room had been spotless when he left it after yesterday’s detention. All that hard work for nothing!
Suddenly, Twinkles growled his little growl, and they all looked up. A bunch of zombie lunch ladies appeared at the shadowy end of the dining hall.
“I know them!” Zoe squealed. “That’s Carol and Doris…and Darla…and Bertha.”
Their faces drooped in pouches of wilted flesh like the back of an old person’s elbow. Their frizzy perms fell in clumps from their hairnets. Bertha’s eyes hung from their sockets by two twisty, blood-slathered tendons. The zombie lunch lady snagged an eyeball in each hand and stuffed them crisscrossed back into her face. “Blaahrrgh!” Big Bertha bellowed. The other lunch ladies hissed in response.
“What are we waiting for?” Ozzie raised his field hockey stick. “Get ’em!”
“Dude,” Rice grabbed Ozzie’s shoulder. “Never bite the hand that feeds you.”
Big Bertha and the other lunch ladies lumbered slowly toward them through the sloppy mess hall.
Suddenly Mr. Fred, the assistant custodian, staggered out of the girls’ bathroom. He lurched shoulder-first into Zack, who dropped his bat. The aluminum clank resounded off the walls.
The reanimated janitor leered into Zack’s football helmet, ogling him with the strange, fixed grin of a psycho killer. Crazy Fred thrust his head down, mouth agape, baring brown, blood-slickered teeth. It looked as though he’d just been chewing gobs of chocolate.
“Help!” Zack screamed.
The zombie janitor’s tongue was canker-blistered and freckled with black bacteria. Zack pushed the ghoul’s drooling face away with his bare hand. His index finger slipped into the zombie’s wet, slime-encrusted nostril.
“Help!” Zack cried once more, ready to puke. A mucusy driblet hung off the face mask, almost touching the tip of Zack’s nose.
Finally, a hand swooped down and grabbed the slobbering beast by the hair. The zombie janitor reeled back, pawing at the air. Ozzie’s arm flew back with a handful of slimy hair attached to a jagged piece of scalp. Rice took a hard cut at the maintenance man with his field hockey stick. The blow connected with a splat, and the big, mannish beast slunk down, limp and still.
Ozzie and Rice bumped chests and growled like lions.
Zack jumped to his feet and brushed himself off quickly. “Thanks, guys.” He wiped the nostril goop onto his pants.
“No sweat,” Ozzie replied. “I owed you one.”
Zoe dragged a long table between them and the lunch ladies, who were still shuffling their way. She grabbed the edge and flipped up one side of the table, tipping it over like a barricade.
“Good idea, Zoe!” Ozzie threw the clump of zombie hair on the floor and ran over to help.
The zombie lunch ladies were getting closer. Ozzie pulled over another table, creating a wide blockade. Zack and Rice dragged a mess of chairs behind the tables to reinforce the barrier.
Zombie Darla was holding a whisk dripping with what looked like cake batter. She flailed her arm and spattered Zoe’s face with clumps of yellow mix.
“Yuck!” screeched Zoe, who picked up a pink cup-cake and launched it across the room, where it exploded with a splat on zombie Carol’s apron.
“Food fight!” Rice shouted, scooping a handful of bread pudding off the floor and flinging it at Zoe.
“What are you doing, loser?” Zoe yelled, wiping the glop off the side of her neck. “We’re on the same team!”
Zack couldn’t help but giggle.
Just then, zombie Doris picked up a pan of goulash and heaved it over the barrier. A flying blob of ground meat and pasta sauce arced through the air and splattered Ozzie and Zack across their chests.
Okay, Zack thought. Now it’s on.
Zack grabbed a tray of meatballs and started firing them at the undead lunch ladies. Doris caught one in the mouth and swallowed it whole. She retched, stumbling into the tables, and sputtered meat crumbs into the air, spraying Rice’s face with half-chewed bits of beef.
Carol and Darla toppled over the second table, tearing ferociously through the tangle of upturned chairs. Zack grabbed his baseball bat from the floor next to the conked-out zombie janitor.
“Which way to the principal’s office?” Ozzie shouted over the ruckus.
Zack paused, struggling to remember the blueprint of the school. Rice and Zoe were still gunning fistfuls of leftovers at each other while the zombified lunch ladies stomped toward them, clawing at the air. “Guys!” Zack called to them. “Quit it!”
Zoe and Rice stopped throwing food for a second and looked at each other. “Truce,” Rice said, dropping his handful of spaghetti.
Zoe pretended to stop and then side-armed an oatmeal cookie like a Frisbee through Rice’s face mask, whacking him on the nose. “Just kidding.”
“Glaargh! Hissssss.” The lunch ladies lurched forward.
“Hurry up!” Ozzie shouted, and the others finally followed.
They ran back down the locker-lined corridor with Zack in the lead. The morning sun beamed through the window across from the door to the boys’ locker room, lighting up the end of the hallway like a beacon.
“C’mon,” Zack said. “I know a shortcut.”
CHAPTER 9
They burst through the locker room door and scurried down the rows of gym lockers and long wooden benches, which were strewn with white towels blotched with pale green slime.
Zoe glanced to her left, looking into the boys’ bathroom. “Whoa…you guys got some weird toilets.”
“Blarrgheckheckhlargle!” a zombie croaked, and they spun to the right.
An agile eighth-grade zombie jumped out from the shower room in full wrestling regalia. Its headgear was partly askew over its crown, and a nubbly bump of cauliflowered flesh bulged out from under the ear protector. Its spandex one-piece uniform was torn, revealing four parallel scrapes from a zombie clawmark. The wrestler zombie hopped and bobbed in an athletic stance while trying to lick its own ear.
“Tom?” Zoe asked, recognizing her classmate.
Zombie Tom lunged at Ozzie, grappling at his shoulders WWE style.
The zombie jockmeister reached for Ozzie’s groin, angling for a body slam, but Ozzie lifted his leg and spun. Now he had the eighth-grade freak in a half-nelson sleeper hold. “Quick,” Ozzie called to Rice. “Open the locker!” Rice flung open the metal door with a loud clank. Zack grabbed the zombie’s feet as Ozzie stuffed it inside and slammed the door.
“Good work, guys!” Zack slapped Rice and Ozzie on their shoulders.
“Hurry up, dorks!” Zoe yelled, depressing the metal push-bar at the exit. She opened the door, and they crept through the side entrance into the dark gymnasium. Zack led the way across the basketball court. The hardwood felt tacky, like the floor of a movie theater. Tipped-over refreshment tables littered the sidelines with smashed desserts and empty bowls of punch. Rice walked over to the mess and bent down. He picked up a lemon square from the floor and inspected it for a second.
“Ewww!” Zoe cried in revulsion. “He’s eating off the floor!”
Rice gobbled down the yummy goody, swallowed happily and sighed. “They only make the good desserts for the parents.”
“Rice, what are you doing?” Zack scolded. “There could’ve been zombie slime on that.”
“I don’t care, Zack,” he responded. “Those lemon things are to die for.”
“Shhhh!” Ozzie said. “Listen.”
Just then, a red ball boinged out of the shadows and rolled to a stop at Zoe’s feet. “Huh?”
A figure staggered out from underneath the bleachers and grabbed Rice by his book bag. It was their middle-aged, undead gym teacher, Mr. Ziggler, decked out in a green Adidas warm-up suit.
Rice tripped backward, crab-walking on the floor, as the zombie gym coach lurched toward him. “I’ll run laps, Mr. Z.!” Rice pleaded. “I’ll do my push-ups! Just leave me alone!”
In a flash, Zoe pi
cked up the dodgeball and heaved it at the Ziggler zombie. The bouncy ball spronged off its head. Unfazed, Mr. Ziggler roared, reaching down and swiping at his out-of-shape pupil.
“Aaaaaah!” Rice screamed.
Zack stepped up with his bat and swung, clubbing the capture-the-flag guru to the hardwood.
Rice took a deep breath, and Zack pulled his buddy off the floor.
“Uh, guys…” Zoe pointed behind them. An army of moms and dads, teachers and staff rose out of the stands and shambled onto the gym floor.
Their art teacher, Mr. Dickens, staggered side by side with Mrs. Thomas, the eighth-grade history teacher. Mr. Dickens’s pink dress shirt was finger-painted red and black with zombie guts, like kindergarten art. Mrs. Thomas rasped, gurgled, and wheezed. Her arms waggled straight out in front of her face, sappy with purple goop.
Ozzie strode over to the pigeon-toed duo, brandishing his field hockey stick.
“Mrs T.’s about to be history,” Rice quipped.
Ozzie swung the bludgeon low, one-handed, and swept the zombie teacher’s feet right out from under it. He twirled the wooden cudgel like a baton and bopped Mrs. Thomas on the noggin. The reanimated corpse hit the floor with a crunchy double-splat.
Class dismissed.
“Run!” Ozzie ordered as the undead parents and faculty stormed the court.
Zack pulled the gym doors open, and they all stood at the top of the steps overlooking the lobby. The zombie-packed corridor resounded with wet, phlegmy moans.
“Glargle snargle rhargh!” Another wretched slew of zombie teachers gushed into the center of the lobby, hacking up goop.
“Stay here.” Zack darted quickly back into the gym. The zombies shambled down the three-second lane.
Zack grabbed the metal bars on the two basketball racks, wheeled them onto the landing, and slid the shaft of a lacrosse stick through the door handles, sealing the other zombies inside the gym. “What are those for?” Rice asked, taking a practice swing with his field hockey stick.
Undead Ahead Page 4