They navigated cautiously through the dark first floor of the middle school. A soda machine cast a faint red glow at the end of the corridor.
Zack, Zoe, Rice, and Ozzie walked on soft, cat feet across the black-and-white checkered linoleum. Twinkles scampered along, too, but on puppy feet.
All of a sudden the dog froze, sniffed the air, and then took off running.
“Twinkles!” Zack called, chasing after the pup. They caught up with him next to the vending machine, where the janitor’s office door hung slightly ajar. Ozzie kicked it open with his foot. The rusty hinges creaked loudly.
“Dude…,” Zack whispered.
“My bad,” Ozzie said.
“Look, you guys.” Rice pointed from the doorway.
Inside the office, two half-eaten BurgerDog value meals lay open on the desktop. Twinkles pranced happily around the fast food. “The outbreak must have happened inside,” Rice realized.
“Poor parents,” Zoe sympathized. “Where do you think they are?”
“If they are…,” Ozzie added cynically.
“Zack, if you were your parents, where would you be?” Rice asked.
“In the principal’s office,” Zack said with certainty.
“How do you know?”
“It’s the place they visit most often,” Zack explained, recalling all the times his parents had been called there to discuss his extracurricular activities. Like selling horror comics to fifth-graders. Or getting caught with Rice after tipping the Coke machine for free sodas. Or talking too much in Senora G.’s Spanish section. “Maybe your parents are there, too.”
“Makes sense.” Rice nodded, a serious look on his face.
They approached another hallway and turned the corner slowly, tiptoeing toward the cafeteria. Meaty globs of freak tissue were smeared all over the puke-green lockers. The walls were tacked with class projects and school banners, all slathered in some kind of egg-whitey pus.
A student council campaign poster with big bubble letters and money symbols read: VOTE 4 GREG—OR HE’LL BREAK YOUR LEG! It, too, was dripping in slime. In the picture, Greg Bansal-Jones smiled, giving himself two thumbs way up.
Just then, a faint zombie howl reverberated through the shadowy beige hallway. “Did you hear that?” Zoe asked.
The doors to the cafeteria swung back and forth, creaking on their hinges.
Zack smelled the permanent stink of stale milk and old mac-and-cheese wafting into the hall.
“Hello?” Rice whispered as they pushed through the swinging doors. “Zombies?”
The mess hall was a serious mess. Long lunch tables were tipped or pushed at awkward angles, and stacks of plastic chairs were toppled, sculpture-like, around the cafeteria. Racks of unrefrigerated leftovers were knocked over, spilling into spoiled puddles of yesterday’s goulash and bread pudding.
Zack couldn’t believe it.
This room had been spotless when he left it after yesterday’s detention. All that hard work for nothing!
Suddenly, Twinkles growled his little growl, and they all looked up. A bunch of zombie lunch ladies appeared at the shadowy end of the dining hall.
“I know them!” Zoe squealed. “That’s Carol and Doris…and Darla…and Bertha.”
Their faces drooped in pouches of wilted flesh like the back of an old person’s elbow. Their frizzy perms fell in clumps from their hairnets. Bertha’s eyes hung from their sockets by two twisty, blood-slathered tendons. The zombie lunch lady snagged an eyeball in each hand and stuffed them crisscrossed back into her face. “Blaahrrgh!” Big Bertha bellowed. The other lunch ladies hissed in response.
“What are we waiting for?” Ozzie raised his field hockey stick. “Get ’em!”
“Dude,” Rice grabbed Ozzie’s shoulder. “Never bite the hand that feeds you.”
Big Bertha and the other lunch ladies lumbered slowly toward them through the sloppy mess hall.
Suddenly Mr. Fred, the assistant custodian, staggered out of the girls’ bathroom. He lurched shoulder-first into Zack, who dropped his bat. The aluminum clank resounded off the walls.
The reanimated janitor leered into Zack’s football helmet, ogling him with the strange, fixed grin of a psycho killer. Crazy Fred thrust his head down, mouth agape, baring brown, blood-slickered teeth. It looked as though he’d just been chewing gobs of chocolate.
“Help!” Zack screamed.
The zombie janitor’s tongue was canker-blistered and freckled with black bacteria. Zack pushed the ghoul’s drooling face away with his bare hand. His index finger slipped into the zombie’s wet, slime-encrusted nostril.
“Help!” Zack cried once more, ready to puke. A mucusy driblet hung off the face mask, almost touching the tip of Zack’s nose.
Finally, a hand swooped down and grabbed the slobbering beast by the hair. The zombie janitor reeled back, pawing at the air. Ozzie’s arm flew back with a handful of slimy hair attached to a jagged piece of scalp. Rice took a hard cut at the maintenance man with his field hockey stick. The blow connected with a splat, and the big, mannish beast slunk down, limp and still.
Ozzie and Rice bumped chests and growled like lions.
Zack jumped to his feet and brushed himself off quickly. “Thanks, guys.” He wiped the nostril goop onto his pants.
“No sweat,” Ozzie replied. “I owed you one.”
Zoe dragged a long table between them and the lunch ladies, who were still shuffling their way. She grabbed the edge and flipped up one side of the table, tipping it over like a barricade.
“Good idea, Zoe!” Ozzie threw the clump of zombie hair on the floor and ran over to help.
The zombie lunch ladies were getting closer. Ozzie pulled over another table, creating a wide blockade. Zack and Rice dragged a mess of chairs behind the tables to reinforce the barrier.
Zombie Darla was holding a whisk dripping with what looked like cake batter. She flailed her arm and spattered Zoe’s face with clumps of yellow mix.
“Yuck!” screeched Zoe, who picked up a pink cup-cake and launched it across the room, where it exploded with a splat on zombie Carol’s apron.
“Food fight!” Rice shouted, scooping a handful of bread pudding off the floor and flinging it at Zoe.
“What are you doing, loser?” Zoe yelled, wiping the glop off the side of her neck. “We’re on the same team!”
Zack couldn’t help but giggle.
Just then, zombie Doris picked up a pan of goulash and heaved it over the barrier. A flying blob of ground meat and pasta sauce arced through the air and splattered Ozzie and Zack across their chests.
Okay, Zack thought. Now it’s on.
Zack grabbed a tray of meatballs and started firing them at the undead lunch ladies. Doris caught one in the mouth and swallowed it whole. She retched, stumbling into the tables, and sputtered meat crumbs into the air, spraying Rice’s face with half-chewed bits of beef.
Carol and Darla toppled over the second table, tearing ferociously through the tangle of upturned chairs. Zack grabbed his baseball bat from the floor next to the conked-out zombie janitor.
“Which way to the principal’s office?” Ozzie shouted over the ruckus.
Zack paused, struggling to remember the blueprint of the school. Rice and Zoe were still gunning fistfuls of leftovers at each other while the zombified lunch ladies stomped toward them, clawing at the air. “Guys!” Zack called to them. “Quit it!”
Zoe and Rice stopped throwing food for a second and looked at each other. “Truce,” Rice said, dropping his handful of spaghetti.
Zoe pretended to stop and then side-armed an oatmeal cookie like a Frisbee through Rice’s face mask, whacking him on the nose. “Just kidding.”
“Glaargh! Hissssss.” The lunch ladies lurched forward.
“Hurry up!” Ozzie shouted, and the others finally followed.
They ran back down the locker-lined corridor with Zack in the lead. The morning sun beamed through the window across from the door to the boys’ locker room, lighting up the end of the hallway like a beacon.
“C’mon,” Zack said. “I know a shortcut.”