White emergency lights flashed like strobes overhead, as Zack, Rice, Ozzie, and Zoe raced into the corridor. A thick pack of mangled arms and legs surged around the corner, as a decaying heap of bowlegged zombies funneled into the linoleum hall.
“Other way!” Zack shouted.
They doubled back, skidding around the opposite corner. At the far end, a second ghastly gaggle of zombies jam-packed the hallway, heading straight for them. They were trapped, caught between two slow-motion droves closing in on both fronts.
“Shoot!” Zack shouted. “What do we do?”
“I’ll handle this,” Ozzie said, unhooking the nunchaku from the metal clasp on his army pack.
“Dude, you better be Bruce Lee if you’re planning to fight through all those things,” Zack said. He stared past Ozzie at the gruesome horde tottering psychotically down the corridor. The zombies groaned, retching up slime as they waddled forward. A haze of stench hovered around them, filling the hallway with the rotten stink of death.
Zoe dashed to the only door on the hallway and yanked it open. “Stupid closet!”
“What’s in it?” Zack brushed his sister out of the way.
A yellow bucket filled with old filthy water and a mop stood next to two push brooms in the corner. Zack grabbed a detergent bottle off the shelf, squeezed some soap into the nasty bilge water, and swished the suds around with the mop. “Here.” He handed the brooms to Zoe. “Give one to Rice.”
Behind them, the first mob of zombies stumbled and crawled their way up the hall. In front of them, the second herd of toothless, drooling goons staggered down the corridor.
Zack lifted the dripping mop head out of the bucket and soaked the floor.
“What are you doing?” Zoe asked. “You’re just making it slippery.”
“That’s the idea, genius,” Zack said, mopping backward. “Nice and soapy.”
“I get it…,” Ozzie said, running up to the yellow bucket. “But we need to speed things up. We’ve got under a minute to get out of here.” He kicked it sideways.
“What the—?” Zack shouted.
The bucket tipped, and the soapy liquid spilled at the feet of the zombie stampede. The beastly brood stepped into the expanding puddle of mop water and slipped on the slick linoleum like first-time ice skaters. They pawed at the walls for balance, only to slide and crumple.
“Follow my lead.” Ozzie gripped his nunchaku and took off, sliding through the tumbling ghouls. With two quick whaps, Ozzie clobbered two of the zombies, then spun backward like a hockey defense-man, clocking two more. He finished with a well-timed reverse back flip over the last zombie and landed onto the dry floor.
Who is this kid? Zack thought.
“Ready…set…” Zack clutched the mop handle. The zombies were three feet behind them, making noises like cartoon people eating: Nom nom nom.
“Go!” Zoe lunged forward, head-hunting for fallen fiends with her push broom, while Rice raced through the zombies covering the floor. Zack used the mop to pole-vault over the reanimated slip-’n’-slimers. On the other side, Ozzie was in the clear, knocking zombies out one by one until there were none left.
“Thirty seconds until automatic lockdown…,” the voice warned them.
“Hurry,” Ozzie called out over the blaring alarm. “We can still make it in time!” He led the way through the dim crimson pulse of the base, stutter-stepping down a cement stairwell with Zack, Zoe, and Rice close behind.
“Automatic lockdown will begin in ten, nine, eight…”
Ozzie slid down the handrail and crashed into the push-bar of the emergency exit door.
“…three…two..one…”
Reaching the ground floor, they all hustled outside.
“Lockdown complete,” the robot lady announced as the door bolted behind them. They stood on a small cement staircase, staring out over a sea of motor vehicles.
“What are all these cars doing right here?” Zoe asked.
“Must be from the traffic jam,” Zack said.
“I don’t remember a traffic jam,” Zoe said.
Rice reminded her. “When you were all…” He hunched his neck and clawed at the air, making a zombie face. “In the back of your mom’s Volvo.”
In the distance, hundreds of zombie savages limped across the tarmac, gurgling their own mucus.
“Get down!” Ozzie ordered as he hit the deck.
Crawling on all fours, Zack heard an ungodly groan and peeked under a Jeep Wrangler to his right. A zombie policewoman squirmed on its stomach, scraping itself along the gravel. It jerked its head to the side and glared at Zack. Its bloodshot eyes were solid pink. The zombified female cop smiled eerily, wheezing through its open mouth. It slithered after them, wedging its body under the Jeep, growling and snorting.
“Move it, Rice!” Zack yelled as he scrambled into a run like a sprinter off a starting block.
They stopped at the last car, peering over the front of a purple Cadillac with long bull’s horns mounted on the hood. A crisscrossing death trap of cantankerous fiends lumbered past the rows of cars. Hairy-chested zombie men with earrings sputtered mouthfuls of teeth. Willowy zombie women staggered along, their veiny skin dripping from their bent and broken forearms. Little old lady zombies in bathrobes and slippers tottered next to undead cowboys in ten-gallon hats, limping in their leather boots, spurs jangling with each off-kilter step. Brains leaked out of nostrils. Skin flaked in great, disintegrated hunks. Each zombie was more revolting than the one before.
Ozzie pointed past the undead bedlam. A large army tank sat by the security fences, where more zombies stumbled in from the scrubland. “I hope you guys are feeling limber,” he said, stretching his quads and arching his back.
“You wanna go through that?” Zoe asked blankly.
“Yeah, what’s the matter?” Ozzie looked Zoe over. “You look like you’re in good shape.” He cocked his head at the boys. “It’s these two I’m nervous about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zack asked.
“The two of you don’t exactly look like you play a lot of sports….” Ozzie let the insult hang in the ripe-smelling air.
“Whatever, dude. We were doing just fine before you showed up,” Zack scoffed.
“All right. All right. Everybody just be cool.” Ozzie grabbed his nunchaku off his pack. “And don’t get in my way.”
Ozzie approached the brain-dead frenzy, swinging the nunchaku slowly.
The zombies’ bulging heads rotated toward them as they entered the shambling footslog of the living dead. Ozzie sprang into action and unleashed a furious attack, clearing a path for the rest of them. The only sound was the whizz of wood whipping through the air and the meaty thwacks of serious skull trauma courtesy of Ozzie’s dazzling nunchaku freestyle.
The brainsick psychos dropped to the concrete in ones and twos. Zack, Rice, and Zoe bobbed and weaved across the runway, dodging flailing zombie limbs. As soon as they reached the clearing, Rice and Zoe raced for the great black tank. Zack was about to follow when he saw the last zombie shuffling toward Ozzie.
Colonel Briggs stood before his son, missing an arm. Blood spurted out from the bony nubbin of his shoulder as if it were a ketchup squeeze bottle.
“Dad?” said Ozzie, losing his grip on the nunchaku. They sailed through the air, clattering on the cement. “Your arm!”
The zombie colonel waggled his dismembered limb by the wrist like a caveman waving a club. Ozzie froze as his father raised his good arm, preparing to clobber his son with the severed appendage.
Zack charged from a standstill and tackled Ozzie to the ground. The colonel lost his balance, falling to the pavement with a thud. As the zombie arm whiffed by their heads, the boys rolled out of danger and scrambled to their feet.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ozzie gave Zack a shove like a chest-pass without the basketball. “I said don’t get in my way!”
“Fine,” Zack said angrily. “Next time your dad wants to play T-ball with your head, I’ll let the two of you bond.” He rubbed his collarbone, sore from Ozzie’s shove. Ozzie stood still, looking back at Colonel Briggs, who was on the ground, slithering toward them. The colonel’s zombutated arm crawled next to him like the Addams Family’s pet, Thing.
Ozzie glared at his old man, his eyes welling with tears, as the massive herd of zombies started to shift in their direction, about to trample over his dad.
“Come on—let’s go!” Ozzie’s voice cracked a little.
And with that, they raced to the armored tank, friend and foe, as the zombies stumbled relentlessly toward them.