Zombie Elementary (3 page)

Next day at school, nobody said nothing.

Sorry, nobody said
anything
. The sign about the chicken pox was gone, and the hallway outside the office was, like, super-clean. Like the janitor had worked extra hard on it, which was weird because she’s very old, and I don’t think she likes to work too hard. I looked into the office for Mrs. Burnett-Cole. Ms. Hoag, who sits at the front desk, spotted me.

“Can I help you, Larry Mullet?”

They always call you by both names. I don’t know why.

What could I say?
I wanted to see how Mrs. Burnett-Cole was after she was attacked by Alex Bates yesterday?
I didn’t think so. I shook my head.

“Well, run along then. Shoo!” She smiled when
she said it and made a shooing motion, like I was a pet or something.

I didn’t think Mrs. Burnett-Cole was at work, but her desk was in a corner, and I couldn’t see past Ms. Hoag. Not without climbing on top of the counter, anyway, and I figured that would lead to trouble. My friend Jermaine could explain away stuff like that, but not me.

I went to class. At recess I said something to a group of kids while we drank juice. “Hey, anybody know what happened to Alex yesterday?”

“Alex Fellowes?” said one kid.

“No, Alex Bates.”

“Alex Fellowes got punched by a third grader. It was funny,” the kid went on. “Alex cried and wanted his mom. He had snot all down his shirt afterward. The little kid called him a wuss.”

“No, not him. Alex Bates,” I said again.

But they all wanted to talk about this other Alex who’d been knocked down by some eight-year-old at the bus stop. I guess that was interesting enough, on another day. You know, a day when there wasn’t a zombie loose in the halls.

I still didn’t know that, of course, but I knew something was going on. Something bad.

And to make matters worse, it was spaghetti for lunch. We get spaghetti on Fridays because the lunch crew gives us meatloaf on Thursdays and pretty much nobody eats it. It’s disgusting. I think I told you that already. So they make it into meatballs and serve it with noodles the day after. I just eat the spaghetti and leave the meatballs. Okay, I usually try one, just to see if they get any better. They never do. They looked worse than usual that day. I’m not kidding. I didn’t even bother trying one. I just poked it with my fork a couple of times.

Still, it was Friday afternoon by then, and the weekend, and what could be better? Except, I dunno, I had a weird feeling.

I didn’t know how bad
until I got on the bus to go home.

I had just settled down in my seat. It was near the back, but not all the way back. My buddies Luke and Jonathan Torres were there, two rows in front of me. The back row was all sixth graders, and they don’t let anyone else sit there. I was just thinking, you know. Not about Alex or Mrs. Burnett-Cole or chicken pox. I was thinking about getting a new bat for the season. I really needed one ’cause I’d grown three inches and it makes a difference.

My sister Honor was close to the front, with all her little third-grade friends. It’s not cool to sit with her.

Our bus driver is Mr. Stine. He’s retired from the dairy. Before that, he was in the navy for twenty years. He’ll tell you all about it if you let him. I let him, once.
I thought he’d never stop talking. Point is, he’s real old and deaf, and my mom said something about suing the school system if he “drives that darn bus into a tree” (although she only said that when she thought I couldn’t hear her talking to my dad). I guess she means he’s pretty much blind as well. That’s okay—I kinda like him. He gives us hard candy sometimes, the kind where you could lose a tooth.

Anyway, the bus was about to pull away when Alex Bates suddenly staggered on out of nowhere. He wasn’t waiting at the bus stop, ’cause I’d have noticed him. And I’m pretty sure he wasn’t in school that day.

I’m also pretty sure he didn’t have chicken pox. He looked even worse than the day before. His head was lolling to one side, his tongue was sticking out and his eyes were just weird. I mean, crazy weird, not just goofball weird. You know how when you get on the bus just as it starts up, it’s easy to get kind of off-balance and trip over your own feet? Yeah? Well, Alex was walking like that when he stepped off the sidewalk, and the bus wasn’t even moving yet. He had his arms stretched out again. As he came down the aisle, he started up with the moaning.

“
NNGAARRRGGGGHHH
!!!!”

He was about level with Honor and her friends, and he turned around, flailing his arms about. I swear he was trying to grab at them, but Honor ducked down and pulled her friend Barbara Jane Swenson behind the seat back so he missed. All the third-grade kids shrieked and screamed. Mr. Stine turned and yelled, “Pipe down, you young whippersnappers!” which is what he always says, and stomped on the gas pedal so the bus lurched forward into traffic. (I guess that’s what my mom was talking about with all the suing and stuff.)

So the bus zoomed ahead, and a couple of cars honked their horns, and everyone got rocked back in their seats. Except Alex, of course, who got thrown down the aisle real fast. He stayed on his feet, and his arms were going crazy and trying to grab people, and his head was bobbing around like one of those bobbleheads you see. Luke yelled something at him, but I couldn’t make out the words. Anyhow, just as Alex came past me, I figured, what the heck, I’m not gonna be just ducking and dodging this clown anymore. I was pretty much pi—okay, I know I can’t
say that. I was ticked off about the day before, about running away and nobody believing me anyhow.

So I stuck my foot out and he fell over it and took a dive toward the emergency door at the back of the bus.

Did I mention he was howling “
BRAIIINNNSSS
!!!!” as well? I shoulda said that already. And “
NNGAAARRRGGGGHHH
!!!!” of course. It was like—what’s the word?—his catchphrase.

The sixth graders who took up the back seats could be pretty snotty to us younger kids, but they weren’t acting cool now. They were just scared little
kids, and they were crying and calling out for their moms like we heard Alex Fellowes had done yesterday. I guess they had a real good reason to be afraid, though, because Alex (Bates, the zombie, not Fellowes, the wuss) was biting at their ankles.

Anyhow, I was still ticked, so I squeezed past Alex while he was distracted with standing up and biting at the same time and pulled on the emergency release handle to make the back door swing open. I was maybe gonna push Alex out of the door myself when suddenly Mr. Stine hit the brakes (like he does about five times every trip) and Alex lost his balance. Then Mr. Stine suddenly put his foot on the gas again (like he always does after he brakes). Alex went flying out the back door and landed on the hood of a Toyota Corolla.

It was okay, though, because he just rolled off into the gutter. Toyotas are reliable cars, my dad says. No damage I could see. Then Alex got up, and he turned around waving his fists at me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I’m pretty sure it was either “
NNGAARRRGGGGHHH
!!!!” or maybe “
BRAIINNNSSS
!!!!” I have to say, his vocabulary had really gotten a whole lot worse with the zombie thing.

The bus hauled round a corner and the rear door slammed shut. All the kids looked at me with real big eyes. Nobody said anything. I just muttered, “Chicken Pox? I don’t think so!”

Nobody said anything to that, either.