Undead Ahead Read online

  The Zombie Chasers

  Undead Ahead

  By John Kloepfer

  Illustrated by Steve Wolfhard

  For my mom and dad —J. K.

  To Jake —S. W.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Zack Clarke stood up in the back of the pickup…

  Chapter 2

  Zack awoke with a gasp. His nostrils burned with the…

  Chapter 3

  A hulking military officer sauntered toward them, backlit by the…

  Chapter 4

  Colonel Briggs led them quickly through the central corridor of…

  Chapter 5

  White emergency lights flashed like strobes overhead, as Zack, Rice,…

  Chapter 6

  Ozzie sat in the driver’s seat, studying a row of…

  Chapter 7

  Finally, they were back on Zack’s, Rice’s, and Zoe’s home…

  Chapter 8

  They navigated cautiously through the dark first floor of the…

  Chapter 9

  They burst through the locker room door and scurried down…

  Chapter 10

  A rowdy pack of undead adults raged at the end…

  Chapter 11

  Standing outside the office, Zack knocked lightly on the locked…

  Chapter 12

  Zack bolted down the moaning hallway and barged into the…

  Chapter 13

  Main Street was trashed and desolate, strewn with plastic bags…

  Chapter 14

  A short while later, Mr. Clarke’s minivan slowed to a stop…

  Chapter 15

  Gray plastic bins flew through the air as the knuckle-dragging…

  Chapter 16

  Zack’s ears popped as they cruised to higher altitude, leveling…

  Chapter 17

  The plane soared over the zombie-speckled parkway below. Zack caught…

  Chapter 18

  It was raining cats and BurgerDogs.

  Chapter 19

  The glass wall of the phone-booth elevator opened, and they…

  Chapter 20

  Zack woke up sitting in a wheelchair. He was rolling…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author and the Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  Zack Clarke stood up in the back of the pickup truck, his pulse still beating fast from the getaway. The halogen lights buzzed overhead as the truck drove into the flickering blackness of the subterranean bunker.

  The zombie outbreak had erupted yesterday around suppertime, sweeping across the country in a matter of hours.

  Now, cruising beneath the Tucson Air Force Base, Zack’s sister, Zoe, was still a zombie; his best friend, Rice, the self-proclaimed zombie expert, had figured out the zombie antidote; Greg Bansal-Jones, their school’s most feared bully, had turned into a whiny sissy insisting that he was not Greg after his own brief zombification; and Madison Miller, the most popular girl at Romero Middle School, was their only hope for survival.

  NotGreg squirmed away from zombie Zoe, who had been tranquilized by the dose of ginkgo biloba Rice had fed her a little less than an hour ago.

  “Hey, man,” NotGreg whimpered. “Will you untape me now?”

  “Only if you keep quiet.” Zack extracted the Swiss army knife from his back pocket and clipped the duct tape from NotGreg’s wrists. The un-bully closed an imaginary zipper over his mouth, then threw away a make-believe key.

  I can’t believe I used to be scared of this dude, Zack thought, and peered inside the truck’s cabin. Fresh blood soaked through the gauze stretched around the bite-wound on Madison’s leg, a present from zombie Greg. Rice was riding shotgun with Madison’s Boggle puppy, Twinkles, on his lap. Twinkles balanced his front paws on the dashboard, seeming happy to be alive again after a stint as a zombie mutt.

  “How’s the leg?” Zack asked Madison.

  “Okay, I guess,” she said. “I’m gonna kill Greg, though.”

  “You mean NotGreg.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Ah,” said Rice. “To Greg or not to Greg? That is the question.”

  “Shut up, nerd burger,” Madison said wearily. “Nobody’s talking to you.”

  Just then, Twinkles nudged Rice’s backpack with his snout, sniffing at the rank specimen within the bag. Zack’s stomach churned as he thought of the infected BurgerDog meat patty pulsating inside.

  “Bow-wow-ow,” the puppy howled hungrily.

  “Hey, slow down, Madison,” Zack said through the slider window, and the truck rolled to a stop.

  On their right, the tunnel opened up into a large room, split into two levels by a loading dock. Yellow bio-hazard barrels lined the base of the high cement walls. A thick red splotch of zombie muck stained the square metal drain-grate in the center of the floor. The gory blotch extended into a curved smear that resembled a lowercase j. Uneven footprints were tracked around the ruddy trail of slime, as if the zombies had risen from a crawl.

  The whole place reeked with the thick musk of disease, and Zack plugged his nose. Something was definitely rotten in Tucson.

  “Eeeeee!” All of a sudden NotGreg let out a high-pitched squeal, grasping Zack’s lower calf.

  Zack whipped his head around.

  A zombified soldier hung off the back of the truck, climbing up the tailgate. The undead commando stretched its zombie yap, cobwebbed with spittle, wide open. It growled and gargled, wriggling its rabid tongue.

  “Step on it, Madison!” Zack ordered.

  Just then, two more zombie soldiers scaled the sides of the truck, tumbling into the cargo bed with Zack, NotGreg, and zombie Zoe. Their crooked limbs were set at impossible angles, like half-squashed daddy longlegs.

  The pickup shot forward, full-throttle.

  “Zack!” Rice called from inside the cab, and handed off a metal crowbar. “Use this!”

  Zack flung the piece of iron at the zombie soldier, striking him between the empty sockets of his eyes. The tailgate fell open, and the eyeball-less madman dropped with a splat into the receding tunnel.

  “Blaahrrgh!” the other two zombies bellowed.

  Zack felt around frantically on the rumbling cargo bed for another weapon and found the wooden base of his Louisville Slugger.

  Across the flatbed, one of the zombies crawled on dislocated kneecaps toward NotGreg. The terrified un-bully cowered in the corner by the open tailgate, his arms curled up like a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s.

  But Zack had his own problems.

  The other zombie wheezed and tripped forward, falling full-force on top of him. In a flash, Zack flipped the bat horizontal, his ears pulsing hotly, as he strained to bench-press the zombie upward. Bulbous viral clusters curdled and bulged off the chin of the diseased sicko, and tusks of yellow-green phlegm hung from the corners of its raw swollen lips. The undead maniac grunted, and Zack felt his shoulder about to give. A ruptured infection dribbled off the zombie’s cheek and onto the corner of Zack’s mouth.

  Puhtooey!

  Zack heaved with every ounce of his strength, and the slobbering beast flung back, staggering to regain its balance. Zack stood up, holding the Slugger tight, ready to strike.

  Suddenly, Madison shrieked at the top of her lungs, and the pickup lurched to a vicious halt.

  Zack flew backward, bashing his head on the truck bed with a hard thunk.

  “Dang, Madison!” Rice yelled inside the cab. “What’d you stop for?”

  “Didn’t you see?” she asked. “That person just jumped right out in front of us!”

  “Zombies aren’t people, Madison.”

  “It wasn’t a zombie, dork brain…it was some little soldie
r-dude!”

  Zack slumped down into a seated position, his ears ringing from the impact. His vision blurred and his head flopped sideways. Zack was looking directly at his zombified sister, Zoe. Her rolled-back, pupil-less eyes stared at him from behind the black metal cage of her facemask.

  And as if fingers had snapped, Zack’s mind went blank. Just like that.

  CHAPTER 2

  Zack awoke with a gasp. His nostrils burned with the harsh tang of bleach. Someone was standing over him, waving a bottle of stuff under his nose.

  “What is that?” Zack sat up, choking.

  His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and a boy’s wiry figure gradually took shape. He wore a green long-sleeved T-shirt, camouflage pants, and a heavy-looking equipment pack strapped to his back.

  “Smelling salts,” the boy responded. “Carried by doctors since the Middle Ages to revive flustered women after they’ve fainted. Also known as ammonia chloride.”

  “I’m ammonia,” Madison stated matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, hello, Ammonia,” NotGreg greeted her.

  “No, Madison,” Rice corrected. “You’re immune.”

  “That’s what I meant,” she said.

  Zack glanced past the new kid to where the two zombie soldiers were sitting back-to-back, knocked unconscious and expertly hog-tied with twine. “You did that?” he asked.

  “Affirmative.” The boy nodded. He had some kind of binoculars strapped to his head.

  “Name’s Ozzie Briggs.”

  “Zack, this dude’s got night vision. Check it out.” Rice pointed to the headpiece.

  “Cool,” Zack mumbled, rubbing the bump on his head.

  “And nunchucks!” Rice reached for the martial arts weapon attached to Ozzie’s pack.

  “Hands off,” Ozzie said.

  “The correct name for them is ‘nunchaku.’ They were a going-away present from my sensei in Okinawa.”

  “You’re, like, a ninja turtle…,” Rice said, in awe of their new friend. He turned to Zack. “You should have seen it, man. This dude totally manhandled them! He came out of nowhere and was, like, BAP BAP BAP.…” Rice kicked his short little legs and tomahawked the air, miming the kung-fu zombie takedown.

  “Yeah, and he almost killed us in the process,” Madison said. “Who jumps out in front of cars like that, anyway?”

  “Sorry about that, babe. I just react sometimes. And you all looked like you needed help.”

  Did he just call Madison ‘babe’? Zack furrowed his eyebrows together. “Well, thanks for the help….” He raised his arm for a handshake.

  Ozzie ignored Zack’s outstretched palm.

  I can’t believe this kid’s really gonna leave me hangin’, Zack thought. He dropped his hand and looked at his best friend quizzically, but Rice was still ninja-chopping away in the semidarkness of the tunnel.

  “Can we go, you guys?” Madison asked. “My leg’s starting to really hurt.”

  “She’s right. We gotta get moving,” Ozzie told them. “We’re not really supposed to be down here.”

  “Wait, what about Zoe?” Madison asked.

  “No way! My dad’s got orders to exterminate these things!” Ozzie shouted.

  “But we brought her all the way from Phoenix,” said Rice.

  “She’s my sister, dude,” Zack insisted. “We’re not just going to leave her here.”

  “Yeah, babe,” Madison added. “Nobody messes with my BFF.” She pronounced the word “biff.”

  “Fine…” Ozzie detached a neatly rolled blanket from his pack. “Bring her if you want, but if they see her, she’s gonna be one dead zombie.” Ozzie snapped the blanket open with a whip-crack, revealing a stretcher with two wooden handlebars at each end. Zack flinched. Rice punched his buddy’s shoulder twice.

  “What was that for?”

  “Two for flinching.” Rice smiled and skipped off next to Ozzie. He reached again for the nunchaku, but Ozzie batted his arm away.

  Rice pulled out a flashlight from his backpack and lit the way as they shuffled down the dark concrete passage. Zack and NotGreg carried Zoe on the stretcher. Madison limped along with Twinkles tucked snugly in the crook of her arm.

  “So how’d you guys end up down here?” Ozzie asked, marching along easily with his night-vision goggles.

  Rice began from the very beginning. “It all started after Zack hung up on me. I was sitting on my couch eating pizza skins when the news came on. Then—BAM—zombies were like everywhere!”

  Ozzie led them up some steps and through a door that opened to a dark tunnel.

  Rice went on. “…then after I saved these guys, they picked me up and we went to the supermarket to get the ginkgo biloba, which I figured out can, like, slow down the zombification process or something.”

  “It also zonks them out, which is why Zoe’s not moving and looks like a total creepo.” Madison pointed at Zoe. “Poor BFF.”

  “Ahem.” Rice nudged Ozzie. “So then at the graveyard, after the Gregster bit Madison, it was completely obvious that she was immune, and like—”

  “Wait, Rice. Shhhh.” Ozzie pressed his finger to his lips, and everyone paused. Up ahead, the sound of footsteps echoed through the tunnel. “Kill the flashlight,” he whispered.

  Rice flicked it off, encasing them in total blackness.

  “I can’t see anything,” Madison whined.

  “Rice, stop touching me!” said Zack.

  “Wasn’t me, dude,” Rice said.

  “Shhhh!” Ozzie shushed.

  “Freeze!” A deep voice boomed in the dark.

  Zack heard his sister’s helmet clunk on the floor.

  Just then, the ceiling lights buzzed and flickered, and the tunnel lit up. NotGreg was holding his hands in the air like a guilty felon.

  A few yards in front of them, two soldiers stood in full camouflage. They wore big boots with shiny toes and carried automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Their names were pinned on the breast pockets of their uniforms: MS PATRICK and PFC MICHAELS. Private Michaels had a crew cut and broad shoulders, and they both had very little in the way of a neck. Zack scooted himself in front of the stretcher to block Zoe from their line of sight.

  “Ozzie?” Sergeant Patrick squinted. “What the heck are you doing inside my perimeter? Yer daddy’s been lookin’ all over for ya! Got ’im worried sick….”

  Private Michaels clicked his walkie-talkie and spoke into the receiver. “Strategic Command, this is Sub-Level A requesting the colonel.”

  A few seconds passed before a gruff, staticky voice crackled from the earpiece. “Briggs here.”

  “Colonel, this is Private Michaels down here in Sub-Level A with Sergeant Patrick…. We found your kid, sir. He’s with some other kids, too, sir…. Don’t know, sir…. You want to speak with him?…Copy that, sir.”

  Ozzie lifted his hand to take the walkie-talkie. Private Michaels clicked the button. “He’ll speak to you later.”

  Just then, the stretcher started to twitch and snarl behind Zack’s feet, and the soldiers switched their attention to what lay beneath the wriggling blanket. The sergeant brushed Zack out of the way with a rock-solid forearm, while the private squatted down next to the stretcher and unveiled the hideous beast.

  “Oh, sweet Murphy!” Private Michaels cursed.

  Zombie Zoe growled in a wild rage behind her lacrosse mask. Her face was cheese white with patches of skin that looked like tortilla chips. A creamy beige blob dripped from one corner of her mouth, looking like butterscotch fudge. Zack’s stomach grumbled. He was hungrier than he thought.

  “Put it out of its misery, Private,” Sergeant Patrick ordered.

  Private Michaels reached for his holster.

  “Stop!” Zack yelled, jumping between zombie Zoe and Private Michaels. “You can’t just kill her! That’s my sister….”

  Zombie Zoe snorted and bucked, drooling as she snarled.

  “Kid, that ain’t nobody’s sister—” Patrick gave her a sorry look.

&nbs
p; “Boy, get out of the way!” yelled Michaels.

  WHOOSH! At the end of the tunnel, a set of high-tech double doors shot open, and everyone froze.

  CHAPTER 3

  A hulking military officer sauntered toward them, backlit by the florescent glare of the hallway. The sergeant, the private, and Ozzie all puffed out their chests and struck a stiff posture. Rice mimicked the soldiers, while Zack slouched wearily with his hands in his pockets. NotGreg sat cross-legged on the ground behind them and sighed. Madison shot the officer a tired peace sign and said, “Hey.” Twinkles woofed.

  “At ease,” Colonel Briggs bellowed. “Now, what’s going on?”

  “Zombie smuggling, sir!” Sergeant Patrick announced, pointing at Zoe.

  “Harboring zombies is a serious offense.” The colonel’s jaw flexed as he watched the zombified girl grunt and twitch.

  “Son, we’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and you decide to break a direct order to screw around with these delinquent hooligans? I’m very disappointed in you, Oswald.”

  Ozzie kicked the dirt, mumbling curses.

  “With all due respect, Mr. Colonel, sir,” Rice interrupted, “your son saved our butts back there. And if it wasn’t for him, we all might have been killed, and then there wouldn’t be any more cure.”

  “Cure?” Colonel Briggs looked puzzled.

  “That’s right, Colonel,” Rice continued. “Madison’s a ginkgo biloba–infused super-vegan with serious antidote potential.”

  “Somebody better start makin’ some sense,” Briggs said. Rice opened his mouth to continue. “Anyone but you,” said the colonel. He looked at Zack. “What about you, kid? Do you talk or what?”

  Zack gulped. “Well, sir…Madison here was bitten by zombie Greg, who was zombified by zombie Twinkles, who got zombified by a zombie burger—only Madison didn’t zombify, because of the ginkgo. But then zombie Greg unzombified after biting her, and so did zombie Twinkles, which means that she’s the zombie antidote…according to Rice.”