The Zombie Chasers (15 page)

“Relax, dude. We made it. We got our secret formula. It’s all good.”

Zack glanced at Madison’s leg. A splotch of red had soaked through the bandage.
The antidote,
Zack thought,
Madison’s the medicine.

The tires slowly rumbled on the grooved pavement, pushing the headlights’ bright beam forward into the blackness.

Zack watched Madison as she primped herself in the rearview. She caught him staring in the mirror and stuck out her tongue, then twisted her face into a goofy sneer. She smiled.

Zack chuckled to himself and smiled back. But despite their discovery, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was not the end.

What brain-munching fiends will
the Zombie Chasers meet next?

Turn the page for a sneak peek at
the next
ZOMBIE CHASERS
novel,
UNDEAD AHEAD

Z
ack Clarke stood up in the back of the pickup truck, his pulse still beating fast from the getaway. The halogen lights buzzed overhead as the truck drove into the flickering blackness of the subterranean bunker.

The zombie outbreak had erupted yesterday around suppertime, sweeping across the country in a matter of hours.

Now, cruising beneath the Tucson Air Force Base, Zack’s sister, Zoe, was a zombie; his best friend and self-proclaimed zombie expert, Johnston Rice, had figured out the zombie antidote; Madison Miller, the most
popular girl at Romero Middle School, was their only hope for survival; and Greg Bansal-Jones, their school’s most feared bully, had turned into a whiny sissy after his own brief zombification, now insisting that he was
not
Greg.

NotGreg squirmed away from zombie Zoe, conked out in the cargo bed from the ginkgo biloba tranquilizer Rice had fed her a little less than an hour ago.

“Hey, man,” NotGreg whimpered. “Will you untape me now?”

“Only if you keep quiet.” Zack extracted the Swiss Army knife from his back pocket and clipped the duct tape from NotGreg’s wrists. The un-bully closed an imaginary zipper over his mouth, then threw away a make-believe key.

I can’t believe I used to be scared of this dude,
Zack thought, and peered inside the truck’s cabin. Fresh blood soaked through the gauze stretched around the bite-wound on Madison’s leg, a present from zombie Greg. Rice was riding shotgun with Madison’s Boggle puppy on his lap. Twinkles balanced his front paws on
the dashboard, seeming happy to be alive again after a stint as a zombie mutt.

“How’s the leg?” Zack asked Madison.

“Okay, I guess,” she said. “I’m gonna kill Greg, though.”

“You mean NotGreg.”

“Whatever.”

“Ah,” said Rice. “To Greg or not to Greg? That is the question.”

“Shut up, nerd burger,” Madison said wearily. “Nobody’s talking to you.”

Just then, Twinkles nudged Rice’s backpack with his snout, sniffing at the rank specimen within the bag. Zack’s stomach churned as he thought of the virus-carrying BurgerDog meat patty pulsating inside.

“Bow-wow,” the puppy howled hungrily.

“Hey, slow down, Madison,” Zack said through the slider window, and the truck rolled to a stop.

On their right, the tunnel opened up into a large room, split into two levels by a loading dock. Yellow biohazard barrels lined the base of the high cement walls. A thick
red splotch of zombie muck stained the square metal drain-grate in the center of the floor. The gory blotch extended into a curved smear that resembled a lowercase
j
. Uneven footprints were tracked around the ruddy trail of slime, as if the zombies had risen from a crawl.

The whole place reeked with the thick musk of disease, and Zack plugged his nose. Something was definitely rotten in Tucson.

“Eeeeee!” All of a sudden NotGreg let out a high-pitched squeal, grasping Zack’s lower calf.

Zack whipped his head around.

A zombified soldier hung off the back of the truck, climbing up the tailgate. The undead commando stretched its zombie yap, cobwebbed with spittle, wide open. It growled and gargled, wriggling its rabid tongue.

“Step on it, Madison!” Zack ordered.

Just then, two more zombie soldiers scaled the sides of the truck, tumbling into the cargo bed with Zack and NotGreg. Their crooked limbs were set at impossible angles, as if they were half-squashed daddy longlegs.

The pickup shot forward, full-throttle.

“Zack!” Rice called from inside the cab, and handed off a metal crowbar. “Use this!”

Zack flung the piece of iron at the zombie soldier, striking him between the empty sockets of his eyes. The tailgate fell open, and the eyeball-less madman dropped with a splat into the receding tunnel.

“
Blaahrrgh!
” the other two zombies bellowed.

Zack felt around frantically on the rumbling cargo bed for another weapon and found the wooden base of his Louisville Slugger.

Across the flatbed, one of the zombies crawled on dislocated kneecaps toward NotGreg. The terrified un-bully cowered in the corner by the open tailgate, his arms curled up like a Tyrannosaurus rex’s.

But Zack had his own problems.

The other zombie wheezed and tripped forward, falling full-force on top of him. In a flash, Zack flipped the bat horizontal, his ears pulsing hotly, as he strained to bench-press the zombie upward. Bulbous viral clusters curdled and bulged off the chin of the diseased sicko, and tusks of yellow-green phlegm hung from the corners of its raw swollen lips. The undead maniac grunted, and Zack felt his shoulder about to give. A ruptured infection dribbled off the zombie’s cheek and onto the corner of Zack’s mouth.

Puhtooey!

Zack heaved with every ounce of strength he had, and the slobbering beast was flung back, staggering to regain its balance. Zack stood, holding the Slugger tight, ready to strike.

Suddenly, Madison shrieked at the top of her lungs, and the pickup lurched to a vicious halt.

Zack flew backward and bashed his head on the truck bed with a hard
thunk
.

“Dang, Madison!” Rice said inside the cab. “What’d you stop for?”

“Didn’t you see?” she asked. “That person just jumped right out in front of us!”

“Zombies aren’t people, Madison.”

“It wasn’t a zombie, dork brain…it was some little soldier-dude!”

Zack slumped down to a seated position, his ears ringing from the impact. His vision blurred and his head flopped sideways. He was looking directly at his zombified sister, Zoe. Her rolled-back, pupil-less eyes stared at him from behind the black metal cage of her face mask.

And just like that, as if fingers had snapped, Zack’s mind went blank.

Want to read the rest of

UNDEAD AHEAD
?

Find out more at thezombiechasers.com

This book would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people: Sara Shandler, Josh Bank, Katie Schwartz, and the creative and editorial staff of Alloy Entertainment and Elise Howard and Rachel Abrams of HarperCollins Publishers.

I would also like to thank my mother and father as well as the rest of my family and friends, in particular the Hahn family for their love and support throughout this project.

—J. K.

Jacket art © 2010 by Steve Wolfhard

Jacket design by Andrea C. Uva