The Zombie Chasers Read online

  Madison shrieked then, looking through the splintered hole around Zoe’s waist.

  “Zack! They’re coming up the stairs!”

  He picked up the phone and took it off speaker. “Rice, I gotta go, man!”

  “Zack, wait! After you and Madison escape, get a car, pick me up, and we’ll figure things out from over here,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Zack told him. “And thanks.”

  “Anytime, bro…and, dude, if I don’t see you…” His best friend’s voice took on a somber tone. A full five-second pause. “I love you, buddy.” Rice hung up before Zack could respond. The dial tone buzzed in his ear.

  Zack stared off into nothing, realizing for the first time that he might not make it through the night. “I love you, too, man.”

  “Do something, Zack!” Madison yelled, sounding truly frantic. The zombie moans were getting closer.

  Zack yanked the Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket and pulled out the long blade. Sitting on the bed, he steadied the plastic bat on its end and jammed the metal point into the bottom, vigorously carving out a yellow parallelogram from the base. He picked up his oversize replica Coke bottle, piggy-banked with coins, and dumped it out in one huge pile next to the bat. Handful after handful, Zack funneled the change into the hollow plastic until it was brimming with ancient pennies caked in a diseased green fungus.

  “Darn it!” Zack shouted, “I need tape.”

  Madison stuck a hand in her purse and riffled around. She plucked out a roll of duct tape and tossed it across the room.

  “Came in handy once already,” she quipped.

  Zack taped off the bat’s bottom and coiled more tape up the base for extra grip. He took a practice swing with the money-heavy bat.

  Madison stepped back as Zack approached his grotesque sister. Now face-to-face with her kid brother, zombie Zoe strained ever harder, reaching tirelessly with both hands. Zack struck a batter’s stance in front of the door.

  “Zoe,” he said, adjusting his grip and planting his feet firmly on the floor, “this is for…well, this is for everything, I guess.” He wiggled his hips like a major leaguer at home plate.

  “Wait!” Madison yelled, stepping in front of Zack. “Just don’t break her nose, okay? She has such a cute little nose.” She backed away, grimacing with anticipation.

  Zack took a hard swing at Zoe’s head and connected squarely with the dome of her zombie noggin. The cheap yellow plastic exploded in a sweet tinkling melody of silver and copper coins. Zack dropped the bat, and his monstrous sister slumped down, half in and half out of the room.

  Madison patted Zoe’s head as if to say, “good puppy” as she turned the doorknob and opened the door.

  The zombie horde had reached the second-floor landing, spilling over one another, grappling mindlessly, clutching at nothing. Zack scooted past his sister and smiled at Madison.

  “Was that fun for you or something?” she asked him.

  “It was worth every penny,” Zack said.

  “You’re such a dork.”

  The undead swarm clogged up the hallway, a tangled heap of shifting limbs, closing in slowly, steadily. Zack was nearly out of ideas, but he had one left.

  “Madison,” he said, “when Zoe sneaks out at night, how does she do it?”

  “Easy. She climbs out her window and goes down the trellis.”

  Just then, one of the zombies tripped forward in a lurching half-stumble. Zack and Madison hopped back out of the way. The zombie hit the floor and crunched its face into the rug, which sounded a lot like squashing a beetle with the bottom of your shoe.

  Zack grabbed Madison by the arm and hustled her down the hall. She shrugged off his grip, strutting away from the zombie mob at her own leisurely pace. The soulless groans throbbed through the house, punctuated by high-pitched yaps and tiny paws scratching at the base of Zoe’s bedroom door.

  Zack pulled the door handle, and the puppy bolted out past Madison.

  “Twinkles!” she shrieked as it went streaking between her legs. “No!”

  CHAPTER 5

  Madison whirled around and watched in horror as her beloved pup barked ferociously at the zombies. But as the rowdy gang of scraggly beasts marched forward, the little dog’s courage wilted in a pathetic whimper.

  “Twinkles…come!” Madison ordered sternly. And as quick as he’d bolted out, Twinkles retreated back to Madison, who crouched down to scoop him up in her arms.

  “Bad puppy!” she scolded him as Twinkles nuzzled and licked her face. Impatiently, Zack held the door for Madison and her nursling Boggle, an unfortunate crossbreed of a whining beagle and a bug-eyed Boston terrier.

  The bedroom door clicked shut.

  Zoe’s room was a hot pink mess, all painted, draped, and covered with the girly color. The magenta walls were plastered floor-to-ceiling with glossy centerfolds of every heartthrob from Justin Timberlake to the Jonas Brothers. Zack gagged a little, sickened by the sight of his sister’s tabloid shrine of chiseled faces.

  He dashed to the window and peered out across the roof of the garage down at his mom’s Volvo parked in the driveway. Madison followed Zack, sheltering the puppy beneath her arm.

  “All right, Madison,” Zack said, straining to pull up the window. “You and Twinkles first. We’re gonna climb down the fence thingy and run for the car, okay?”

  “You mean the trellis?

  The one with all the zombies climbing up?”

  “Sure, trellis. Whatever.

  Wait. What do you mean, ‘climbing up’?”

  Madison pointed to the side of the garage, where sure enough, four zombies were attempting to scramble their way to the top.

  Luckily, the zombies weren’t very coordinated, losing their balance mid-climb and falling to the ground repeatedly, hollow crunch after hollow crunch.

  “Geez,” said Zack. “Well, at least they can’t get up here.”

  “They’re already up here, genius.” Just then, the room shook with a terrifying rattle as the upstairs zombies battered into the door. Twinkles growled and flashed his tiny teeth. Madison just stood there, petting the puppy’s head.

  “Are you not at all upset about the fact that we’re about to die, Madison?” Zack paced back and forth, wading through piles of discarded Zoe outfits strewn across the floor.

  “Of course, I’m upset,” Madison said. “I missed the Evite to the End of the World party, and now I’m living out my precious last moments with you, you little freakazoid.” Her words were filled with spite. “Where is Greg Bansal-Jones when you need him?” She sighed wistfully.

  If Madison was the prettiest girl in eighth grade, then Greg Bansal-Jones was the prettiest boy and definitely the meanest. Zack couldn’t stand the lunkhead’s stupid-sounding last name. And he would never forgive Greg for what he’d done to Rice in the bathroom. Greg and his two buddies had welcomed Rice back to school by flipping him upside down over the toilet bowl and dipping him headfirst into a triple chocolate fudge swirly. And sometimes, when the hallways of the school were quiet and empty, you could still hear Rice’s screams echoing off the walls.

  “Whatever, Madison, I’m trying, all right?” Zack said. “You and Greg and Zoe, you all think it’s so cool to be mean. But if we don’t get to that car down there in the next couple of minutes, you’ll never have another chance to be a jerk to anybody ever again.”

  Madison withdrew into scornful silence in front of the window. Zack walked off into the connecting bathroom. The bedroom door rattled and creaked with the force of a dozen zombies.

  Zack surveyed the windowless bathroom for another means of escape. Another weapon. Come on, Zack, he kept thinking. There’s always a way out.

  He flung open the towel closet and saw their only chance: the laundry chute. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it earlier. But there it was, and he knew where it led. Straight to the garage. Ground level. A quick hop-skip-jump to their sweet Volvo getaway.

  “Madiso
n, we’re gonna be okay! We just have to go down the chute!”

  “The laundry chute?” she asked from the other room. “You have got to be kidding.”

  “Hurry up! It’s the only way out!”

  “Zack, I’d rather be eaten alive than fall into a pile of your nasty underwear! Sick!”

  Then came the sound of glass shattering and Madison’s bloodcurdling shriek.

  Zack rushed to the bathroom doorway and froze. The zombie crashed through the window, and Madison stumbled backward, tripping on the pink carpet. Zack recognized this zombie, too. It was Donnie Zimmer. Danny’s twin brother.

  Flat on his stomach, Donnie wiggled his hips, side to side, like a slug inching forward, panting, snorting, and grabbing at her heels. As he reached for Madison, his dingy yellowish skin stretched open, dripping blood down his arms, cut deeply from the sharp broken glass. Just before he lunged forward in a vicious, last-ditch bid to snatch her, Madison scrambled to her feet. Twinkles clung to her shirtsleeve, eyes boggling.

  Madison brushed herself off and picked up her shoulder bag. The revolting corpse rose slowly from the floor and shuffled toward them. He wore a red, half-shredded T-shirt with a picture of a snake devouring its own tail.

  “I thought you said these things can’t climb,” Madison said, catching her breath. Donnie Zimmer waddled across the room like some psychotic toddler.

  “Yeah, well, at least they’re super slow….” Zack ushered Madison into the bathroom. The bedroom door started to crack, and the smothered zombie moan swelled through the fractured wood.

  Zack gazed down into the dark, fathomless laundry chute and then back at Madison. “It’s gonna be a tight squeeze.” Madison shot him a sharp, devilish glare.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Zack said. “You’re bigger than me, that’s all.”

  “Bigger?” she asked, steely-eyed. “I’m bigger than you? Why don’t you just say what you really mean, Zachary?”

  “What are you talking about, Madison?”

  “That I’m too fat to fit down that disgusting chute…”

  “Are you kidding me right now?” Zack shouted with a growing sense of alarm. “We gotta go!”

  The Zimmer zombie lurched nearer and nearer, and the ravenous horde of snaggletoothed hellhounds pulverized the bedroom door mercilessly. It was now little more than a gnarly blob of mutilated limbs and snapping jaws.

  In spite of all this, Madison waited, arms crossed, chin raised, tapping her foot. Zack plucked up her bag and tossed it down the chute in a frenzy of impatience.

  “Madison, come on!”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you say something nice.”

  “Something nice,” Zack blurted unwisely, holding out his hand for her to take.

  “About me, you little runt,” she said, playing kissy-face with Twinkles and scratching her pampered lapdog behind his ears.

  Zack racked his brains for a quick, easy compliment, but with Madison that was not so easily done.

  “You know what, Madison?” Zack paused.

  The slavering ghouls tumbled into Zoe’s bedroom, a hideous gush of belching mutants.

  “If you want to stay here and get eaten, that’s your problem.”

  And with that, he snatched Twinkles, climbed into the chute, and slid down, leaving Madison alone to decide her fate.

  Zack rumbled down the old metal shaft, plummeting toward the garage. He held Twinkles snugly to his chest, and together they plunged into the stale stink of unwashed clothes.

  Shaking off a pair of grass-stained jeans, he listened for Madison coming down after him, but he only heard the empty whoosh of the downdraft. Then, out of the buzzing hollow of the chute, a mind-ripping shriek echoed down to the garage. An eerie silence followed, and Zack felt a heart-sinking chill in the endless quiet.

  “They got her…?” Zack whispered in disbelief.

  CHAPTER 6

  Twinkles cocked his head in confusion. “I guess it’s just me and you now, Twinkie….”

  But before Zack could pick up the whimpering mutt from the laundry, the laundry chute thundered to life with a metallic clunk.

  Zack and Twinkles watched as Madison flew headfirst into the musky hamper. She flung her arms and legs wildly, slinging off the Clarke family laundry every which way.

  Madison stood up and turned to Zack. “I can’t believe you left me up there with those Filthy McNasties,” she said, punctuating every word with a fierce jab to his scrawny chest.

  But despite the dull pain of Madison’s chest-poking onslaught, Zack couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from curling up into a grin.

  “You think it’s funny to leave a girl stranded like that?” she demanded.

  Zack broke out in a fit of laughter, and it was then that Madison realized the joke was on her…literally.

  In the midst of her tantrum, she’d neglected to notice the huge pair of tighty-whities hanging around her neck. She ripped them off her head quickly and threw them at Zack. Puh-tooey!

  “Whose are those?” she squealed, repulsed.

  “Must be Dad’s,” Zack giggled, stretching the elastic waistband a good two feet before flicking them away like a giant rubber band.

  “Oh, that’s sick.” She shuddered, plucking Twinkles off the pile of laundry.

  Zack pocketed his mother’s car keys off a brass hook next to the switch for the garage door. Meanwhile, the zombies staggered just outside the garage. Madison peeked through the window, holding Twinkles. “Where did they all come from?” she asked, as Zack scanned the walls for a decent weapon.

  “I don’t know,” he said, arming himself with a rusty ax.

  “What do you think you’re doing with that?” Madison asked him defiantly.

  “You heard what Rice said.” Zack swung the ax, and the edge whistled as it slashed through the air. “The only way to kill ’em is to chop off their heads.”

  “Zack, you can’t just kill them,” Madison argued. “They’re people!”

  “Wrong, Madison. They used to be people. Now they’re dead people that don’t know how to stay dead. It’s a doggie dog world, Madison,” Zack said. “I don’t make the rules.”

  “No, I make the rules. And the rule is, no killing anything until we figure out what’s going on out there,” Madison said, stroking Twinkles’s head. “And by the way, it’s not doggie dog world, it’s dog-eat-dog—”

  WHAM! A rotting zombie arm smashed through the garage door right behind her. Madison jumped around, but the curdled, pulpy hand ripped Twinkles from her arms before she could step away.

  Zack hopped over, ax raised, ready to hack through the grisly forearm, dangling severed veins off slabs of pruned flesh, but just before he brought down the blade, Twinkles sank his tiny fangs into the diseased thumb. A small geyser of black juice squirted up from the puncture hole, and the pup squirmed free of the zombie death grip.

  The gruesome arm drew back through the jagged hole in the garage door as Twinkles dropped to the cement. The ax head clanked on the floor with a bright orange spark. A torrent of pain shot up the wooden haft into Zack’s wrists.

  “Owww!” he yelped.

  Madison rushed over to her puppy, and the frightened little dog scampered off hastily into the shadows. “Twinkles?” she shouted. “Come back!” But Twinkles had already darted back into the house. Madison’s big blue eyes narrowed with hate, her face a crazed scowl. She spun wildly around and stomped to the back of the garage. She came back from the junk-cluttered corner, wielding an old fire extinguisher.

  “Open the door,” she said in a tranquil daze, possessed now with the relaxed composure of divine vengeance.

  “Are you sure that thing even works?” Zack asked skeptically.

  Madison aimed the fire extinguisher at Zack’s feet and squeezed the pressure valve. The red tank hissed and gargled, and a fierce white spray shot from the black nozzle. “Now!” she commanded.

  He dropped the ax and q
uickly pressed the button. The gears cranked overhead, slowly hoisting the garage door on its tracks. As the door lifted up, the overpowering stench of death seeped into the garage while the nitrous vapor seeped out.

  Outside, the sluggish zombie brutes dragged their scuzzy feet toward the grinding screech of the rising door.

  Madison clutched the nozzle, her thumb jittery on the shiny steel trigger.

  The wretched dog-snatching zombie wobbled through the white foggy haze, and Madison shot a long blast of foam from the fire extinguisher. Blinded by the chemical froth, the zombie stumbled forward, flailing away at Madison.

  She leaped to her right and dodged the foam-frosted ghoul, executing a textbook side kick that landed squarely in the zombie’s lower back and sent the beast clanging into the garbage cans at the back of the garage.

  “You like that, you walking pile of pus?” Madison shouted.

  Pulling the car keys out of his pocket, Zack sprinted to the Volvo, unlocked the driver’s side door, and hopped behind the wheel. He watched through the windshield as two more zombies shambled off the lawn toward the garage.

  Madison aimed the extinguisher’s nozzle at their rage-twisted faces, clicking the valve over and over, but the foam had run out. The zombies leaned as they hobbled, bones crooked in their sockets, faces curious and almost smiling as they limped toward Madison.

  “Zack, do something!” Madison cried, backing across the blacktop.

  Zack cranked the key in the ignition too far clockwise, causing a horrible chattering screeeek, and stretched his foot down to the pedal.

  He slammed on the gas, and the Volvo lunged forward, colliding with the two bloodthirsty fiends. They soared off the bumper and sailed onto the lawn.

  Zack slammed on the brakes and jumped out.