The Zombie Chasers #4 (11 page)

O
utside, Zack flung open the back doors to Egon's vegan food truck.

Zoe hopped in the driver's seat and turned the keys still in the ignition, revving the engine. Madison and Twinkles jumped in, riding shotgun, while Zack, Ozzie, and Rice quickly loaded up their getaway truck with the cases of Vital Vegan PowerPunch.

From the shattered greenhouse, psychotic glass-speckled zombies sparkled in the streetlight and shambled after them with thick pus oozing from their lacerations.

“Let's hit the road!” said Zoe as she threw the gearshift in reverse and peeled out into the street, screeching away from the undead madness in their wake.

“You all right, dude?” Zack asked Ozzie. “You're bleeding.”

Ozzie turned his head to see the rip in the back of his shirtsleeve. “Just a scrape. No biggie.”

“Hey,” Rice said to Zack, “you're bleeding, too.”

Zack looked down at the bloody spot on his pant leg and picked a tiny tooth out of the cut in his leg. “Just a zombie squirrel bite.” He smiled, tossing away the tooth. “No biggie.”

Rice unzipped his pack and pulled out some first-aid supplies, along with an assortment of individually wrapped snack cakes. “Don't leave home without 'em.”

But then, as the excitement from their brush with the undead waned, a solemn mood washed over their ride.

“So what are we going to do now?” Zack asked. “All we have is a bunch of kiwi-strawberry vitamin water.”

Rice pounded his fist against the inside of the truck. “If only they had cloned Madison when they had the chance . . . ,” he said, trailing off.

“Come on, Rice,” Ozzie said. “Let's not play the ‘what if' game. We gotta stay focused.”

“You're right, Oz,” Rice said, taking a deep breath. “What the heck do we do now?” The five of them sat quietly for a few moments before Madison broke the silence.

“OMG!” Her eyes lit up with a bright idea. “I can't believe I didn't think of it till now,” she said, perking up a bit. “My cousin Olivia . . . she's, like, totally my clone. She's on the same diet as me and everything. We, like, totally look the same, too, except she's got brown hair and I'm a little prettier.”

“Hmm.” Rice scratched his chin. “Interesting.”

“That's it,” Zack agreed. “We've gotta get to her right away.”

“Okay, so where am I driving to, guys?” asked Zoe.

“Umm, it's kind of far,” Madison replied. “She's Canadian, but she lives right across the border near Niagara Falls.”

“What do you say, guys,” Ozzie said, as they drove deeper into Brooklyn. “You down for another road trip?”

“Whatever it takes, man,” Zack said, feeling slightly better. “Whatever it takes. . . .”

“All in favor say ‘eyeballs,'” Rice said.

“Eyeballs!” the five of them said together.

“Arf!” Twinkles barked. “Arf-arf!”

“Canada, here we come!” said Zoe, whooping. She pulled the truck onto the highway and they zoomed off to track down Madison's cousin and unzombify the world.

Again.

Excerpt from
Nothing Left to Ooze

 

T
he windshield wipers clacked hypnotically back and forth as the vegan food truck sped along the frozen lakeshore toward Buffalo, New York. Zack Clarke sat and watched the snowflakes fall in the fading twilight. The entire area was still in the dead of winter, despite the spring weather elsewhere.

Behind the wheel, Ozzie Briggs followed a detour sign and steered the truck off the expressway into the city.

It had been almost ten hours since they had escaped a rezombified New York City. Now they were on a mission to track down Madison's vegan cousin, Olivia, the one person who could help them formulate another zombie antidote.

Madison sat in the back, her cell phone pressed to her ear, trying to reach her cousin. “It's going straight to voice mail,” she whined.

“At least we have her address,” Rice piped in.

Ozzie slowed the food truck at a blinking yellow traffic light. In front of them, the road turned into a circular roundabout with a large white obelisk jutting out of the center.

All of a sudden—
Bam! Bam! Bam!

“We've got company!” Zack glimpsed back in the side-view mirror. Two undead figures latched tightly to the exterior panel of the truck. The zombies, a man wearing boxer shorts and a black puffy vest and a woman in a bathrobe and pink bunny slippers, looked as though they had rezombified in the middle of getting dressed. A mustache of snot rimed across the undead bathrobe lady's upper lip, which curled back to show off her purplish, bloodstained teeth.

“Buckle your seat belts, guys!” Ozzie swerved the food truck from side to side, attempting to shake the undead joyriders loose.

“The zombies aren't coming off,” Zack said. “They're stuck!”

“What do you mean they're stuck?” Madison asked.

“I mean stuck,” Zack said. “Like that kid's tongue that touched the flagpole in that Christmas movie kind of stuck.”

“Oh, no,” Ozzie muttered. “Not good.”

“What's wrong?” Zack asked, turning his attention back to Ozzie.

“We're not stopping!” Ozzie shouted as the vegan food truck slid wildly on a patch of black ice. “Hold on!”

Zack stiffened in his seat as they glided toward the massive cement staircase at the foot of city hall. Ozzie spun the wheel as they swerved a hundred-eighty degrees and then jumped the curb with a loud thump.

Zack heard the two zombies detach from the side of the truck with a sound like Velcro ripping. The undead couple rose to their feet and tottered toward them again, pawing the air, their arms red and raw from where their skin had adhered to the freezing metal.

“Go!” Zack shouted, but when Ozzie pressed the accelerator, the back wheels just spun in place.

More undead snow dwellers appeared on the staircase and began to wobble in the truck's direction.

Ozzie floored the pedal again, but the truck still wouldn't budge.

“We're caught on something!” Ozzie yelled. He looked at Zack then at Rice. “You two gotta go out there and get us unstuck.”

“Fine,” Rice said. “But only if you let me use your nunchacku.”

Ozzie grunted.

“Please!” Rice begged as Zack grabbed one of the umbrellas he'd kept from New York City.

“Fine.” Ozzie sighed. “Don't break them.”

Zack and Rice opened their doors and hopped out onto the icy steps of city hall. A gust of frigid wind blasted Zack in the face and stung his eyes.

“Zack, look out!” Rice shouted as a rezombified teenager lurched out from behind a stone pillar. He hollered a kamikaze battle cry and swung the nunchacku at the frostbitten freak, knocking the undead hooligan flat on his back. “Dude, did you see that?” Rice asked. “I was like, Whaa! Come get some! Whaa!” Rice swung the nunchacku again, emitting a string of kung-fu sound effects.

“Ozzie will be proud.” Zack smiled.

When they rounded the back of the truck, Zack saw that the black iron banister they had crashed into was half ripped out of the concrete staircase and had hooked the rear fender, lifting the back wheels a few inches off the ground.

Zack grabbed the metal bar with both hands and tugged hard, but it wouldn't budge.

“You need help, Zack?” asked Rice.

“No, I think I can get it,” said Zack, hooking the railing with the umbrella handle. “Just watch my back.”

Rice turned toward the growing horde of abominable snow zombies. “Ya'll better back up!” he warned.

“Okay, let's give it a try!” Zack shouted up to Ozzie. “On the count of three, hit the gas!”

“One! Two!” With all his strength, Zack yanked back on the umbrella and pried the handrail off the fender. “Three!” The engine roared and the food truck shot down the steps and into the street. The brain-hungry truck vandals flew off the sides of the vehicle and landed splat on the sidewalk.

Down in the street, Zoe threw open the truck's side door and stuck her head out. “Hurry up, dorkbrains! We got cousins to find!”

Zack and Rice sprinted to the truck and hopped in. Ozzie hit the accelerator, and the food truck skidded into motion, spraying up icy slush into the zombie faces behind them.