The plane soared over the zombie-speckled parkway below. Zack caught the bird’s-eye view through the oval window. The tottering masses looked like ants on the ground. There were no headlights. No cars driving at all. Just bursts of lightning illuminating the road, which was teeming with tiny ghouls.
The stormy East Coast city was crawling with the undead.
The nose of the jumbo jet tipped down slightly through the harsh, whipping wind of the dark Washington, D.C., storm.
Finally, the wheels of the plane touched down on the rain-swept pavement of George Washington Memorial Parkway. The jet bounced back up, and Zack felt his stomach churn the way it did during a dip on a carnival ride. The entire cabin jolted. Zack, Rice, and Zoe bobbled around in their seats, rigid with fear. Zack hugged Twinkles securely in his arms. The puppy whimpered as the massive aircraft rocked to a stop.
Ozzie stepped out from the cockpit. “That went pretty well,” he said confidently. “You guys ready to do this?” He grabbed the field hockey stick off the floor.
Zoe sat stiff in her seat, still clutching the armrests, eyes bulging. She didn’t look ready at all.
“Chill, Zoe.” Rice patted her on the head and grabbed his bag.
“Put Twinkles in there,” Zack said. “I don’t want him running away again.”
“Good call, Zack Attack!” Rice pulled open the zipper.
“Not that pocket,” Zack directed, eyeing Rice’s specimens. “I don’t want him eating any more BurgerDog, either. And don’t call me Zack Attack.”
Rice put Twinkles in the other pouch.
Zack glanced outside through the little window. “What time is it here?”
“Little after six,” Ozzie said, slamming his elbow pad into the palm of his hand.
Ozzie popped the side hatch open, and they jumped onto the roadway. Huge, dark-green trees thrashed in the cold, wild wind. A vast plague of rain-drenched beasts shambled along the pavement. Zoe, Rice, Ozzie, and Zack shot past the zombie fiends and headed off the side of the road. They trampled down a hill through some tall, marshy grass and came to the edge of a great river, which looked ready to flood.
A flash of lightning lit up the sky.
Zoe shrieked—the zombies were sloshing and stumbling after them.
“Look.” Ozzie pointed upstream.
Not too far away, a bridge spanned the river. “Run for it!” Zack shouted, and they booked it along the riverbank.
They sprinted away from the zombie mob to the other side of the river, stopping to catch their breath beneath two towering brass statues of colonists riding horseback. Ahead of them, the road forked around a massive white building surrounded by gigantic pillars.
“The White House…,” Rice said with awe in his voice.
“Actually, that’s the Lincoln Memorial,” Ozzie corrected. “Haven’t you guys ever been to Washington?”
“We live in Arizona, dude,” Zack said.
“The White House isn’t that much farther,” Ozzie told them, and they took off around the back of the Lincoln Memorial into the tree-lined park.
“Hey,” Rice called. “Wait up!”
Ozzie was running ahead of them, too fast. Zack hustled, trying to keep an eye on the one kid he did not want to lose track of.
Suddenly, a slime-smothered ghoul tottered out from behind a tree trunk. Zack dodged its flailing arm, trying to see through the downpour.
And just like that, Ozzie was gone.
“Ozzie!” Zoe yelled in the pelting rain.
Zack heard something howl like a wolf caught in a bear trap. Ozzie? Zack sprinted in the direction of the agonized noise. Up ahead, Ozzie was rolling in the mud, grasping his leg below the knee with both hands.
“AHHHHHH!” Ozzie wailed. His ankle was stuck in a scraggle of exposed tree roots. “My leg!”
“You okay, man?” Zack shouted, pulling Ozzie’s foot out of the hole. Ozzie yowled, gasping for breath, as the rainfall battered them.
“Ah, man,” Rice said, catching up. “This is worse than when you forget to turn off injuries in Madden.”
A zombie mailman staggered out from behind a nearby tree, slathered in slime. He bellowed a tortured moan, shambling toward them, going postal.
“We have to get Ozzie out of here,” Zoe warned.
A lightning bolt split the sky, and Zack caught a snapshot of the scene around them. An endless rally of zombified citizens closed in on all sides. Mud-covered savages crisscrossed in the light and then disappeared in a flash of shadow. The storm rumbled and popped with a furious burst of rain.
“To the Lincoln dude!” Zoe pointed through the trees to the memorial.
Zack and Zoe carried Ozzie across a roadway, away from the zombie onrush and up the short, wide steps between two gargantuan pillars. Under the shelter, they placed Ozzie on the cold marble and stared down at their wounded ninja soldier.
Ozzie pulled up his pant leg and grunted. It wasn’t pretty. The shinbone was visibly cracked above his ankle, bulging under the skin.
“Dude,” Rice said sorrowfully. “Your leg is busted!” He poked at it with his finger. Ozzie howled again.
“Rice, give me those binoculars,” Zack ordered.
Rice dug around in his pack, plucked out the pair of binoculars, and handed them to Zack, who peered through the magnifying lenses.
“What do you see?” Ozzie asked, wincing, half in shock.
Zack saw the Reflecting Pool, tinted green, spilling over with floating zombies, pruned and bloated. The tree-lined parkway was roiling with rain-soaked, brain-hungry fiends.
“A ton of zombies,” Zack responded. “And, like, this giant spiky thing at the other end of a pond.”
“Okay.” Ozzie gasped. “That’s the Washington Monument. You guys are gonna follow the pool and make a left at the big spike thing.”
“What are you talking about ‘you guys’?” Rice asked.
“Then go straight, all the way down, until you hit the White House,” Ozzie went on, ignoring him.
“You’re not coming?” asked Zoe.
“How?” Ozzie squeezed his broken leg. “I can’t walk.”
“Maybe we could just go real slow and the zombies wouldn’t know we’re not zombies.” Rice staggered forward, his arms outstretched, doing a remarkably good zombie impersonation.
“I’m useless,” Ozzie said. “Deadweight. Leave me here.”
“No way, dude,” Rice said. “We’re not leaving you behind!”
The rain poured in buckets off the roof of the Lincoln Memorial. Zack paced back and forth nibbling his thumbnail.
“It’s for the best,” Ozzie said.
“I’m really good at three-legged races,” Zoe blurted.
“Thanks, Zoe,” Zack said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Duh,” Zoe retorted. “Just tie his bad leg to one of my good legs.”
“Think you can do that, Ozzie?” Rice asked.
“It’s worth a shot…,” Ozzie said, gnashing his teeth.
Zack and Rice helped Ozzie stand up and balance on his good foot. Zoe stood directly next to him, putting her good leg against his bad one. Zack wrapped the three-legged racers with the last of their duct tape and chucked away the empty roll.
They stood now, the four of them on seven legs, under the watchful gaze of Abraham Lincoln, sitting on his oversized throne.
Zack looked out over the zombie-ridden capital of the zombie-infested USA, and it dawned on him that this was not just about them anymore. It wasn’t just about Madison, and it wasn’t just about their moms or their dads or their puppies or their friends. A fist-sized knot tightened in his chest.
This was about everyone.