Standing outside the office, Zack knocked lightly on the locked door. They waited in the uncertain silence. “Mom, are you in there?” he called out in a raspy whisper.
“Zack?” A muffled voice responded through the wood. The door opened an inch. Mrs. Clarke peeked one eye out through the crack and sighed. “Oh, thank goodness.” She swung the door completely open, hustling them inside the principal’s office.
Zack hugged his mother tightly around her waist. She clutched his head to her chest.
“Hi, Mrs. Clarke.” Rice waved sheepishly.
“Hello, Johnston,” she replied. Like mother, like daughter.
“Have you guys seen my parents around?”
“Sorry, honey. It got so crazy, we don’t know if anyone escaped.”
Rice bit his fingernail, starting to look worried.
“Where’s Dad?” Zack asked.
“I’m up!” Mr. Clarke groaned, peering over the desktop. Zack’s dad rose from the floor slowly, limping, with a big gash on his knee. Zack hugged his father.
“Hello, Rice,” Mr. Clarke grumbled. “Who’s this guy?”
Ozzie looked up from polishing the fermented brain residue off his survival knife. “Oswald Briggs, sir,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Zoe snagged a seat in Principal Lynch’s whirly-chair and put her feet on the desk, with her hands behind her helmet. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “Your leg isn’t looking so great.”
“Zoe?” Mrs. Clarke asked with surprise. “Is that you?”
“Hello, Mother.”
“I didn’t even know that was you under there,” she said. “Take off the helmet.”
“Sorry,” Zoe said. “It’s for your own protection.”
“Don’t be silly. Take it off.”
“You asked for it.” Zoe removed the headgear.
Mrs. Clarke shrieked at the sight of her daughter’s sore-freckled face. Zoe started to cry. “It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay…,” Mrs. Clarke comforted her. She clutched Zoe tightly and stroked her stringy hair. “Your father and I know a wonderful plastic surgeon.”
“Hey, honey—we can worry about our daughter’s face some other time.” Mr. Clarke turned the principal’s computer around on the desk for everyone to see. The Web browser was open to YouTube with HOSTAGE MAKEOVER paused on the screen. Zack’s face was being smeared by three different lipsticks at once. “You’ve got some explaining to do, young lady.”
“It’s true,” Mrs. Clarke said, holding Zoe’s shoulders. “Getting called into the principal’s office during parent-teacher night does not a happy parental unit make.”
Rice nudged Zack. “Why’s your mom talking like Yoda?”
“Whatever,” Zoe said, nibbling at her nails, her face a bored mask of whateverness.
Zack’s parents glowered at their firstborn child. Rice looked at something interesting on the ceiling and whistled a nervous tune. Ozzie glanced out the window, scanning the schoolyard for zombie threats. Zack waited for justice to be served.
“I think we need to call a family meeting,” Mrs. Clarke suggested.
“Right now?” Zack and Zoe whined at the same time.
“Look…” Ozzie stepped in. “Mr. Clarke, Mrs. Clarke, you two seem like swell parents and all, but as I’m sure you know, this place is crawling with zombies who want to eat us, and we should really get moving while we have the chance.”
“Ummm…” Rice gestured at their only exit. “There goes our chance.”
Everyone turned toward the office door.
Mr. Clarke said a bad word, which was bleeped out by Mrs. Clarke’s scream.
Principal Lynch loomed in the doorframe, casting a huge zombie shadow across the floor. The big man wore the grin of a hungry predator that had just spotted its next meal. Zombie Lynch bellowed and yowled.
“Ahhh!” Zoe tipped back too far in the whirly chair, falling backward behind the desk.
The zombie’s face was wet and clammy like a piece of deli ham. A tree of blue veins throbbed in its forehead.
Ozzie whirled his field hockey stick and ran at the superintendent of ghouls. He bounded forward with a flying side kick.
The zombie principal swatted Ozzie to the floor with a single swipe of its gargantuan arm. Ozzie whacked his head against the edge of a file cabinet and slumped down, motionless.
I told him to wear a helmet, Zack thought.
Zombie Lynch limped forward, lumbering, a rope of gray, tangled snot swinging from its walrus-like mustache.
“Ready, Rice?” Zack looked at his buddy, and together, they charged.
Principal Lynch swung an arm again, backhanding the boys, which sent them both flying straight through the secretary’s cubicle.
Zack’s father hobbled forward, swaying like a wounded boxer. Apparently, the monster Lynch wanted to pick on someone its own size, or the next closest thing to it. The zombified principal lunged at Mr. Clarke, wrapping him up in its huge, bulky arms. The two grown men toppled to the floor.
Mr. Clarke fell flat on his back, underneath the massive zombie freak.
Then, just as the zombie principal was about to clamp its filthy maw onto Zack’s dad’s shoulder, a deafening screech pierced the air. Rice was pressing the little squeaker button on the megaphone, and the zombie brute whipped its head around in the direction of the high-pitched noise.
Ozzie shot up, wielding the field hockey stick. He took two quick steps and swung like a pro slugger, smashing the sleek wooden cudgel into the soft temple of the zombified principal. The stick cracked in half. The zombie’s spine went weak, and its head flopped to one side. A pus-like glob of cranial brain mucus spewed forth from the principal’s puke-white ear as the headmaster ghoul dropped to the floor.
The contaminated blob landed directly on Mr. Clarke’s wounded knee.
“Oh, it stings!” Zack’s dad cried, clutching his thigh.
“Dad!” Zack shouted.
“Ewww…” Zoe squealed at the icky brain goo seeping into her father’s leg. “So grody.” She gave a little shudder.
“Do something!” Mrs. Clarke yelled, scurrying over to her husband. She knelt down next to Mr. Clarke and blotted the slime-filled gash with her shawl.
“Stop, Mom,” Zack said. “You’re just smearing it in.”
“Is that bad?” she asked.
“I don’t know—is that bad?” Zack asked Rice. “I mean, he wasn’t bitten. You said the only way to be turned into a zombie is to be bitten by a zombie, right?”
Mr. Clarke howled louder. “That hurts!”
“Yeah, but…” Rice cleared his throat. “That was before we knew about BurgerDog.”
“So what are you saying?” Zack asked. “My dad’s gonna turn into a zombie?”
“It’s gonna be okay, man.” Ozzie put a comforting hand on Zack’s shoulder.
Zack didn’t respond, remembering the zombie colonel and thinking about how much he wanted his dad to stay his dad.
Rice pointed to Mr. Clarke’s leg and made a dubious face. Blue swollen veins squiggled out from the infected flesh wound, spreading the zombie virus up the thigh and down the shin.
Ozzie squeezed past Zack and Rice. “How’re you doing, Mr. Clarke?”
“How does it look like I’m doing?”
Ozzie pulled out his survival knife. “Listen, sir. I know this isn’t ideal, but if we act now, we can amputate the leg about midthigh before it spreads up any higher.”
The shiny blade caught some light and sparkled in Ozzie’s hand.
“Zack?” Mr. Clarke said, his eyes bugging out. “You keep this little psychopath away from me and I’ll buy you anything you want.”
Ozzie crouched down and examined the viral infection, scraping at it gently with the side of the knife. “We gotta get rid of this leg pronto.”
“Zack…” Mr. Clarke looked up desperately at his only son. “Anything.”
“Can I have Zoe’s room?”
“Sure.” He nodded.
“Hey!” Zoe shouted.
“Ozzie.” Zack put his hand on Ozzie’s shoulder. “I’m gonna go get some stuff from the nurse’s office. Can you wait to cut my dad’s leg off till I get back?”
“He’s your dad.” Ozzie shrugged. “Do what you want with him.”
“I’ll be right back,” Zack said, and hustled out of the room.
“You’re not supposed to say that, you know…,” Rice called after him.