Chainsaw Chucky was not what you’d call a careful driver. The old truck swayed from side to side as he gunned the engine and we raced back toward town. I hoped the highway patrol wouldn’t stop us. Maybe they knew to leave Chucky alone.
“Where was the first place yew saw bunches of zombies?” he asked. I reminded him. The baseball field. Chucky spun the wheel, and we screamed off in that direction.
“They say zombies keep repeatin’ familiar habits,” said Chucky. “Yew know, goin’ to the mall, hangin’ out at the hardware store, like regular folks. Only undead.”
The ball field was quiet. There was a dad and a kid playing catch. A little kid, you know, second or third grade. They play T-ball at that age. He wasn’t good. He wasn’t good at all.
“Zombie alert!” screamed Chucky.
What? Where? I swiveled my head around looking for zeds. Jermaine did too. Then he figured out what Chucky was yelling about.
“That kid over there, Larry! See the way his arms are wavin’ around? See how he staggers?”
Sure, I’d already spotted him. The dad threw, the boy put his hands up and missed the ball. But he was just a kid with limited athletic ability. That’s what Coach Chicka told Deven Black’s dad when he cut him from the team. Deven’s real, real bad at catching. But this kid was even worse.
Oh. I got it. Chucky thought the kid was a zombie.
Chucky jumped the curb and headed across the field. The truck swerved toward the dad and son, and stopped dead about ten feet from them. The dad looked at us like we were nuts.
“Okay!” said Chucky. “Yew kids rescue the old guy and git him in the truck. Ah don’t think he’s been bit yet. Ah’ll deal with the zombie.”
“That’s not a zombie!!!” Jermaine and I yelled together.
“It’s a little zombie,” said Chucky, like it was obvious. “The old guy’s tryin’ to hold him off by throwin’ stuff at him.”
Oh, boy.
“Chucky, that’s not a little zombie. It’s just a kid. He’s trying to play catch with his dad,” explained Jermaine.
“Really?” Chucky’s head spun around, like this was surprising news. “Dangit! Ah woulda took the chainsaw to the little dude!”
He backed up the truck. The dad stared at us. The boy turned around, open-mouthed. He dropped the ball, again.
We drove away. I looked at Jermaine out of the corner of my eye. He shook his head.
There’s a nursing home—you know, a place for old people—about a mile along the highway. As we got close to it, Chucky started yelling. “Yee-haw! More zombies! Let me at ’em!”
I have pretty good eyesight. I squinted. No zombies I could see.
Jermaine yelled first. “No!!! It’s just the old folks getting out of their van.”
An attendant was helping the seniors down from one of those big vans with the special elevator things to help people with disable-bilities get in and out. Some of them were pretty tottery, if that’s a word. You know, not real able to balance or walk too well.
I guess they looked like zombies. If you really concentrated hard, they might be zombies. If you really, really WANTED to find zombies, you might be fooled into thinking that—
“Chucky! Those people are not zombies. They are people’s grandparents.” Jermaine was pretty definite about how he said that. Like he was telling Chucky off.
“Okay,” said Chucky, all sheepish. “Ah guess we’ll go past the city hall and fire department. Then circle back around the park.”
We drove on.