Zombie Elementary (10 page)

I was surprised too. I didn’t think Midas Muffler was open on a Sunday.

I didn’t mention it to Mom and Dad. I figured if they didn’t see it, they didn’t need me to tell them about it. I know when to shut up.

Sometimes I do, anyway.

We pulled into our driveway. Dad said something about pulling up weeds this afternoon. Mom said he should because it was supposed to rain later.

Nobody said anything about Mr. Phalen going all “
BRAIIIINNNNSSSS!
!!!!” in church, or Francine using the piano stool like she was chopping firewood.

“You did good,” whispered Honor. “He was a zombie, right?”

I called Jermaine from the phone in the hallway—Mom and Dad weren’t around—and told him what had happened. His family stays in bed late on Sundays and goes out for something they call brunch, whatever that means. It sounds way better than church to me. There are pancakes.

“Dang!” said Jermaine. “Double dang!”

“Have you seen any zombies?” I asked.

“Nuh-uh. Although the waitress at Denny’s was pretty slow.”

See, that’s the thing with Jermaine. I wish he’d take things more seriously sometimes.

“Hold on, Larry. I’ve got another call. Later, okay?”

I hung up and the phone rang again about two minutes later. I answered it.

“Hey, is this Larry? I need to talk to Larry!”

“Who is this?” I said. All the calls we get are for Mom or Honor. Not for me. Okay, Jermaine calls me. Nobody else calls me. And this wasn’t Jermaine.

“Duh, it’s Francine! I need you to come outside and help me. Bring your bat!”

“Uh, okay. Where are you?”

“Outside, like I said!”

I looked out the window.

Francine was looking back at me over the neighbor’s fence. I guessed she was hiding, ’cause she was hunched down between an old shed and a tree. She had a cell phone and a lacrosse stick.

“Quit staring and come out!” she said again. “And bring that gosh-darn bat!”

Francine explained it to me
while we cut through old Mrs. Jackson’s yard and out to a side street.

“I snuck out while my mom and dad were arguing about what to do with me. I mean, after what happened in church.”

“Huh,” I replied. “My folks are acting like nothing happened in church.”

“Yeah, well mine were fighting over whether I just brained a longtime church member or saved us from some sort of horrible death!”

Well, at least the Brabanskys talked about what had happened. My parents acted like everything was just normal.

“Come on!” said Francine. “We gotta get over to Oak Street. Jermaine’s meeting us there with his BB gun.”

“Jermaine Holden? You know Jermaine?”

“Not really—I mean, he goes to our school and everything. But I heard he saved you from that zombie boy at the baseball game, and who else am I gonna ask? So I looked up his number in the phone book and wrote it down. I called him right before I got you.”

Jermaine was waiting at the corner of Oak and Third. He had his BB gun wrapped up inside a coat, so nobody would give him trouble. You know how adults are.
You could take somebody’s eye out with that thing!

Francine’s phone rang. “Uh-huh. Right. No, we’re on our way. No, you can kick her in the head as much as you like. It doesn’t matter if she’s head cheerleader. She’s a zombie now. What’s she gonna do, cut you from the squad? Five minutes, okay?”

She looked up at us. Maybe we had weird expressions on our faces.

“Cheerleading squad sleepover last night. Everyone’s gone zombie except me and Celeste Laroche. She says she’s up in a tree house fighting off the other cheerleaders. I took off in the other direction and made it home. I didn’t know Celeste was still, uh,
still with us
until she texted me during Sunday School.

You aren’t supposed to text in Sunday School, but I guessed that wasn’t so important at a time like this.

“Where are we going?” asked Jermaine, rattling his box of BB ammo.

“Lisa Phalen’s house,” said Francine. “It was her dad who … you know.”

Right. Her dad, who drives an ambulance.

Drove an ambulance.

“Yeah, he came home last night with that kid who chased you. We were all baking cookies. They had blood all over themselves and were moaning and groaning—well, you know how. Lisa’s not real bright, so she asked if they wanted cookies.”

“And did they?” asked Jermaine. He’s always interested in what zombies get up to. It’s research for him.

“Nah, they were already munching on some guy’s leg when they came in.”

“The other ambulance man,” muttered Jermaine.

“Yeah, I guess. But then they started munching on cheerleaders, instead,” said Francine.

“Ew,” I said. I felt sick.

“Oh, quit whining,” she told me. “In fact, shut up and get your bat ready. It’s over this next fence.”

“What do you see?”
demanded Francine.

I was tallest, but it was a pretty high fence. Jermaine had boosted me up so I could look into the Phalens’ yard. I told them what I could see. “It’s pretty normal. Flower beds and a bench and some of those—what do you call ’em, those little stone people like Christmas elves?”

“Is that all?” demanded Francine.

I looked around a bit more. Then I spotted the thing that was unusual.

“Oh, cheerleaders. Zombie cheerleaders. They have their uniforms on, and pom-poms.”

The cheerleaders were lurching around under a big tree, looking up with their arms raised. They were making a real low moan, not the full “
BRAAAAAIIIIINNNNNSS!
!!!!” but more like
“bwainsss!”
The kind of
noise you might expect zombie cheerleaders to make if you thought about it.

Then I heard a voice that sounded in charge. Peppy. Perky. A bit pushy.

Other voices chimed in, but real slow and draggy.

“Celeste.”

“Come on down! We’ll eat your brains!” sang the perky voice.

“Comeon down we’ll eash your bwains,” the other voices tried to follow, but sorta slurry.

“Huh,” muttered Francine. “That girl Whitney is peppy even when she’s dead.”

I peered across the yard and saw that the girl leading the chant was blond and princessy. She was doing some motions—I don’t know the names for all those routines—and the others were trying to follow. One of them fell over into a rosebush. A tall girl with a ponytail stood on one long leg. Her other leg fell off.

It was gross.

“That’s just sad,” said Francine. “She was pretty good at that yesterday.”

She dialed a number on her cell. I could hear a phone ringing across the yard. All the zombies looked up.

“Celeste, we’re here,” whispered Francine. “Get their attention, okay?”

“You should text her,” said Jermaine. “Quieter.”

Francine gave him a dirty look.

“Hey, I’m just sayin’,” said Jermaine. “Zombies have really good hearing.”

Suddenly there was a bunch of noise over at the tree. A girl with cornrows poked her head out of the tree house and started yelling stuff I didn’t understand at the zombie cheerleaders. She was waving her arms around and screaming at them in French. She really put on a show.

It got their attention, and the zombies reacted like I guess she wanted them to. She dissed them good. Seems you can annoy zombies by calling them names. At least some kinds of zombies.

Now the head cheerleader, Whitney, was telling the others something.

They started to build a human pyramid. They didn’t do it real well. Someone’s arm came off. The whole thing fell down, and they started again. (Determined, I’ll say.)

“Right,” said Francine. “Let’s go!”

She scrambled over the fence. Jermaine pushed me over, then passed me his BB gun so he could climb over himself.