“Come on!” said Zack, pointing away from the direction the super zombies were headed. “That way!”

“Blarghf!” A slew of zombie moms and dads came barreling through the entrance hall to the food court, their bare skin crispy and flaking from their bright pink sunburns.

“Okay.” Zack stopped in his tracks. “Maybe not that way!”

“AHHH!” Madison and Olivia both shrieked as another zombie pack of undead Fun World children shuffled around the corner and forced them down the side hallway, leading to the service doors that went through the back kitchens. With no other way out, they retreated through the doors and down the grungy hallway intended for employees only.

“You guys, over here!” said Olivia, finding a side emergency-exit door off an adjacent hallway. The alarm sounded a series of ear-piercing beeps as they burst out into the heat of the stinking, undead night.

Zack and the gang ran back outside into the amusement park and hid behind a Fun World ice cream shack. They stopped for a moment to catch their breaths.

“Yo, man,” Zack said to Rice. “What happened back there?”

“I’ll admit,” Rice said, putting his hands up and backing away from Olivia, who was scowling at him with a mean mug on her face, “it was a rookie mistake.”

“A rookie mistake?” Olivia said, the anger growing in her voice.

“Come on, guys, we can’t stay here and play the blame game,” Ozzie said. “Those things are going to find us eventually. Rice, you said they can communicate?”

“Uh-huh.” Rice nodded. “And they know what we look like.”

“Well, those things are my mom and dad and big brother.”

“Sorry, Olivia,” Zack said. “I know it’s messed up. We’ve all been there, but we have to get out of Fun World and get you to a safe location before it’s too late. We’ll find a way to un-super-zombify them.”

As they sprinted to the exits of the food court pavilion, Zack noticed a distinct lack of zombies milling around outside.

“Where did all the zombies go?” he asked, limping on his sprained ankle.

“Who cares?” said Zoe. “Just keep up, slowpoke.”

They hurried through the undead ghost town, but when they reached the main entrance, they saw a massive pack of ghouls blocking the front gates, the only way they knew out of Bunco’s Fun World.

Super zombie Ben was at the front of the crowd, hunched over, prancing from one foot to the other like a dancing baboon. He seemed to be barking orders at the zombies, but they weren’t listening. Ben grunted angrily and started to grab the normal zombies by their decaying arms, hurling them into the massive cluster to block off the main entrance even further. He turned his head abruptly toward Zack and the gang, and a crooked smile flashed across his pallid, undead face.

“Are you seeing this?” Madison said.

“OMG,” Zoe said. “He’s using them to trap us inside the park.”

“He’s trying to control them,” Rice said.

“This is way worse than we thought,” said Ozzie.

Ben pointed toward Zack and yowled a battle cry in his native zombie tongue. Zack watched as Ben’s platoon of undead civilians turned and started advancing toward them.

“There’s gotta be another way out!” Zack yelled, spinning around. “Let’s go!”

But as Zack and the gang moved back through the park, they soon spotted Uncle Conrad sitting behind the wheel of a golf cart trying to herd more zombies toward another Fun World exit.

“It looks like they’re getting smarter!” Zoe yelled.

They all watched as Uncle Conrad drove himself into the fence around one of the rides. Not knowing how to reverse, the super zombie kept driving forward into the fence. He smashed the steering wheel with both hands and then hopped out of the cart.

“Well,” Zoe corrected herself, “maybe not that smart.”

Uncle Conrad’s head cranked around slowly as his eyes locked with the kids’ gaze. Olivia’s super zombie pops then lifted the golf cart off the ground, aimed it directly at the kids, and set it back down before getting behind the wheel and driving right toward them.

“You guys,” Olivia said, quickly dragging Zack away, “we just need to get to the waterpark. There’s a parking lot on the other side of the fence there, and if we can get over the fence, we can get to my parents’ rental car.”

“Good idea, Olivia!” said Zack. “But we’re going to have to get through these guys first.”

Waves of moaning zombies surged toward them down the main thoroughfare and up the rainbow brick road.

“Over here!” Rice shouted, pointing toward the Fun World go-kart tracks.

Zack, Rice, Ozzie, Zoe, Madison, Olivia, and Twinkles raced through the gates. Ozzie jumped behind the check-in counter and started tossing everyone helmets. Then they hopped in the go-karts and buckled up. Zack nestled snugly into the go-kart’s leather padded seat and turned the key to start the motor. “Ready?” Zack shouted over the roar of motors and zombie groans. Ozzie raised his arm and his go-kart led the way. The six of them vroomed off the track and into the fun park.

Zack steered right then left, zipping past the undead droves, swerving in and out of the zombie foot traffic.

All six go-karts banked to the right and away from Cousin Ben’s crew of zombie cronies. A fearful thrill ran through Zack as he jerked the steering wheel back and forth, swerving like a Formula 1 racer. He floored the accelerator, and his go-kart sped past Bunco’s statue, by the batting cages, and finally toward the waterpark.

As they cruised into the waterpark, the go-karts all slowed down amid the many water rides. Zack, Rice, Ozzie, Madison, Zoe, and Olivia threw the go-karts into park and jumped out onto the pavement. In front of them, they could see the Double Helix: the tallest, fastest slide on the East Coast.

Rice gazed skyward, admiring the Double Helix. The giant mega-slide was actually made up of two separate slides wrapping around each other in a spiral. It was forty feet high and twisted from one end of the waterpark to the other before dropping at a sharp angle nearly straight down. “Whoa,” Rice said. “Check this thing out!”

“No more rides, Ricey-poo,” Zoe said. “Time to get out of Freak World for reals.”

Ozzie put his foot on the tall wooden fence bordering the parking lot and then climbed his way to the top. On the ground, Zack squinted through a hole in the wood. Staring back at him, a bloodshot eyeball dripping with zombie goop bulged through the peephole.

“Ozzie, wait!” Zack shouted as his friend peered over the fence.

“Whoa!” Ozzie said, seeing that the pack of zombies led by Aunt Ginny was waiting to ambush them on the other side.

“Uh, dude,” Rice said, nudging Zack away from the fence. “We gotta go!”

Zack whirled around away from the zombified fence and looked back into the waterpark and Fun World beyond it.

Olivia let out a shriek that resounded throughout the thick, stench-filled air.

Coming toward them in the dinged-up golf cart, Uncle Conrad herded a dense, impenetrable pack of zombies, blocking their only route to backtrack out of the waterpark on foot. The super zombie jumped off the golf cart and limped slowly on his bum hip, licking his undead chops.

Behind them, Aunt Ginny’s zombies were scaling the fence, piggybacking one another and flopping over inside the waterpark.

“Looks like you’re going to get your wish after all,” Olivia said to Rice. “Let’s go!” They took off running away from the now zombified parking lot fence toward the sky-high ladder of the Double Helix waterslide.

There was only one way out. And that was up.