It wasn’t fair. Buck had all these green-pineapple looking explosive things he took from his dad’s military truck when he left, but he wouldn’t let me throw any of them at that power shed. Houston said that I wouldn’t be able to throw them far enough not to hurt us and that Buck had been some high school sports star, so he should be the one to throw them. I shouldn’t be mad because in the end no one threw them. Buck put them all in a sack and then filled a sack with rocks until it weighed the same. Then he tried to throw the rock sack to see how far it would go. He may have been a super-star back in high school but he couldn’t throw it very far. He could have done it if he only had one explosive pineapple to throw, but he said one would only damage the power supply, not bring it down. I was pretty helpful though because I came up with the idea of how they could get a bag of booms over the fence.
“Didn’t all of you have to do that catapult project in high school?”
“That’s right, we did!” said Houston.
It took a bit of time for Nemesis, Buck, and Houston to decide which one of their old catapult designs was the best and I got so bored listening to them I fell asleep. By the time I woke up, Ghost had designed the best out of the three catapults and had scavenged somebody’s backyard shed to build it.
It looked cool, but I didn’t get a chance to play with it. They said it was all rickety and weak and would only be good for one use. They were pretty clever with it though. They tied some minty green dental floss to each of the pins sticking out of the pineapple and tied those lines into a rope that stuck out of the top of the bag, which they then tied to the catapult lever. I don’t know why they didn’t just leave those pins in there and let them explode when they hit something hard, but it did make it look like a bunch of candy being helpfully unwrapped before it was delivered by air.
I thought it would be fun like fireworks or that there would be a big fireball like there is in the movies, but I was wrong. The sound hurt my ears and made them ring for a bit and the air pushed at my chest. It made me wish we could have done the job with bottle rockets and sparklers instead. But at least it worked, and it brought my sister back to me.
It also made us run like crazy, even though we still had split-kits on our back. At some point Ghost finally put KC down so she could run on her own, but they held hands while they did it. It made them look stupid, almost as stupid as KC’s bright orange jumpsuit.
Nemesis noticed KC’s new clothes as well. She was huffing and puffing like the rest of us from all the running, but she managed to eke out a comment in between her panting. “You do realize the color of your fashion failure is going to get us noticed, right? You couldn’t even blend in a pumpkin patch.”
Everyone stopped at that. We looked at each other but were not able to say anything because we were all trying to catch our breath. Eventually Mouse said something, though I could barely hear her over all the wheezing. “She can change into my spare clothes. Or Howard’s wife’s clothes. Or whoever the clothes belonged to back in the Suburb of the Dead.”
I’m not sure if KC shivered because of the cold or the thought of being back in dead people’s clothes, but she went off behind a big tree and changed anyways. She came back in a long brown dress big enough to run in. It was also big enough to step on, so Ghost tied a piece of rope around her waist and pulled enough of the dress through it to let KC run without tripping, which was too bad because I would have liked to see her trip in it, just once. Then we weighed the day-glo jumpsuit down on the ground with rocks and kicked dirt and leaves all over it. “They may find this,” said Buck, “But let’s not make it easy for them.”
“I think we should retrace a third of our footsteps and then head west towards Doom’s cottage. They won’t be expecting us to head back.”
“Hopefully there will be enough corpses to keep them busy and distracted while we put space between them and us,” Houston added.
“Can we walk?” I gasped. “I don’t think I can take anymore of this running.” Nemesis and Mouse looked like they felt the same way.
“Let’s test things out. Everyone clear your thoughts and focus on our plan.” I did what Ghost said and I think the others did too because they held their breath and went real quiet. I couldn’t hold my breath for more than a minute. Once we were all breathing again Ghost asked, “Did any of you sense any danger? Any alarm bells going off in your heads? Any warnings from decomposing deadheads?”
I got nothing and the rest of the group shook their heads no. We gratefully walked back the way we came and turned towards the direction Ghost told us to turn once he could see some stars. And as we walked we felt better and better. I didn’t realize how scared I was that I might not see my sister again. It was like my whole body was clenched in a fist that didn’t relax until I saw KC. It felt good not to be scared.
I was thinking about asking Ghost to teach me how to read stars so I would know where to go and that’s when I noticed our new companions. They were hard to see at first in the darkness, but I couldn’t miss the one that was wearing a giant brown tent. I pointed it out to KC, but she said it wasn’t a tent, it was a Snuggie. Then Houston said that it wasn’t a Snuggie it was a Slanket, and Nemesis said she didn’t care what it was called as long as she didn’t have to see what was under it. I knew we had to be safe because they were back to play-fighting and teasing each other. The body was too far rotted to tell whether it had been a boy or girl, but that didn’t stop us from giggling every time it tripped over its Snuggie-Slanket and fell on its face with a thud. I didn’t feel bad about laughing at it because I knew it didn’t hurt, and it made me think of baby Maggie from the Simpsons.
Who knew zombies could be funny?