said. “It’s a zombie girl. Duh.”
Neil’s dad grabbed hard on his shoulder. “Neil.”
“Sorry,” he said. “But she is. Her name is Max.”
“You were talking to a girl?” his mom was giggling under her breath.
“A zombie girl,” Neil said. “Not a regular girl.”
His mom kissed him on top of his head. “There’s hope for you yet.”
He gave his mom a mean look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind.”
He glared at her again, then looked out the window. “Max, what if you turn us into zombies?”
She shook her head. “Not even zombies are safe from zombies.”
“Then we’re just going to have to kill zombies,” Neil said. “Except you. Come on, dad. Let’s go get the guns.”
So they went into the basement and Neil’s dad unlocked the cabinet where all the guns were. He gave two to his mom, then took two for himself, and locked the cabinet again.
“What about me?” Neil asked.
“You already have a gun,” his dad said.
“A fake gun,” Neil said. “I already shot Max with the fake gun, and she just got up again. Fake guns are stupid.”
“No,” his mother said, in her I Am the Mother so SHUT UP voice. Yikes.
They made Neil stay in the basement, then went upstairs to get food and stuff. Neil could hear them whispering, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying through the basement door.
Come on, he thought. Shoot some zombies already.
The basement door opened, and a dark, stinky face poked through. “Neil?”
“Max!” Neil said. “How did you get in our house?” He glared at her, showing his teeth. “Did you eat my parents?”
“No! I sneaked through your window. They’re still getting food and stuff. Can I hide here with you?”
“You’re just going to eat us, you dirty zombie!” Neil raised his fake gun toward her, backing down the stairs.
“I promise I won’t eat anybody in this house.” Max came inside the basement door and shut it behind her.
“Promise that if you eat anybody in this house then we get to eat you right back!” Neil said.
“Okay,” Max said.
“You have to hide behind the washing machine,” Neil said. “That’s the stinkiest place in the whole basement. And you’re pretty stinky.”
“Am not.”
“Stinky zombie girrrrrrl.”
The basement door opened, and Neil ran with her to the washing machine, shoving her behind all the tubes and wires.
“Neil? Are you okay?”
Neil ran toward the basement door, shot his mom twice with his stupid face gun, and ran away again.
His mom sighed. “Be quiet, okay? Don’t pull the trigger. Just whisper.”
“Okay, mom,” he whispered loudly, then went back toward Max. “I’m going to be really mad if I don’t get to kill any zombies.”
She said, “You know, I think I’d like to kill some zombies, too.”
“But you’re a zombie!”
“One of them,” she said, “tried to eat me. People have been a lot nicer to me than zombies. So I’d rather kill zombies.”
“Okay,” Neil said. He showed Max the gun cabinet. “We need guns. But it’s locked.”
Max snorted. “We don’t need guns. Let’s see what else we can find.”
Within a few minutes, they had found a big hammer that neither one of them could lift very well, a small ax and some fish hooks, and a box with a sword in it. It wasn’t a very good sword. It was all rusty and only had a wood handle with no dragons or jewels on it. But it was pretty sharp. Neil cut himself on the tip of the sword as he imagined chopping though the zombies with it.
“I want that one,” Max said.
“It’s mine,” Neil said.
“You’re just a stupid human,” Max said. “You’ll get killed in two seconds.”
“No I won’t. And it’s my dad’s sword. You have to take the ax and the fish hooks.”
“What am I going to do with fish hooks?”
“Use them like a lasso.”
Max wasn’t happy about it, but she finally agreed, and the two of them sneaked up the stairs to the basement door.
Neil put his ear on the door. “I don’t hear anybody.” He opened the door slowly, and the two of them sneaked out. The TV was still off.
A loud sound, so loud that he would have dropped his sword and covered his ears except he knew that stupid Max would just pick it up, came from down the hallway. He and Max sneaked down the hallway with their weapons raised. More noises were coming from his bedroom, where one adult zombie was hanging half inside and half outside the window with its head exploded, and his mom and dad were wrestling with two more zombies on the other side of Neil’s bed.
He had to save his mom and dad!
He pointed at Max, then pointed at the zombie fighting his dad. Then he pointed at himself, and he pointed at the zombie fighting his mom. Max nodded, and they both sneaked through the almost-dark room behind the zombies.
“Now!” Neil yelled.
He swung with his sword right into the zombie’s back. His sword chopped right into the zombie, and a big black gash opened up, dripping ooze. But then his sword got stuck on something. Oops! Neil’s mom was hanging onto her shotgun with both hands, trying to shove the zombie away. The zombie fell forward a little from Neil’s sword attack and tried to bite her face. His mom pushed harder, and the zombie started to fall backward toward Neil. He yelped and jumped backward. The zombie fell over backward so the sword got unstuck from its back, then landed on the ground with its head right between Neil’s feet.
Neil knew what to do. He chopped with the sword until the zombie’s head came right off! He kicked the head under his bed, which was where he put all the stuff that he didn’t want to have to clean up.
Then he looked over at Max. There was an ax stuck in the back of the adult zombie’s head, and Max was hanging onto his back, chewing on his neck. He could see all kinds of strings sticking out of the zombie’s neck. Max bit in deeper, and the zombie tried to grab her and get her off, turning in a circle.
Neil’s dad raised his shotgun, aiming it at Max’s back.
“No, Dad!” Neil shouted, but it was too late.
Boom! Max’s arms let go, and she fell on the floor like an exploded action figure.
Boom! Neil’s dad fired again, and this time the adult zombie’s head exploded, and it fell into Neil’s closet, knocking over the shelves of clothes and getting tangled in the hangers.
Neil dropped to his knees. Stupid zombie girl, he thought. She should have just run away.
But Max wasn’t dead, she was only exploded. Neil pushed the pieces back together while his parents hugged each other. When the pieces touched each other, they squeezed together a little bit. They still looked all cut up, but at least they were stuck together.
Soon, Max moaned. “Owwww...”
Neil’s dad aimed the shotgun at her, but Neil stepped in front of her. “Leave her alone. She helped save your life.” He gave them his best mad face.
Max rolled over, stuck her hands inside the head of the zombie on the floor with the exploded head, and started to eat the brains. It sounded pretty gross, so Neil turned around to look. Yep. It was gross.
“You stink,” he announced.
“You’re a boooooy,” Max mumbled, dripping brains out of her mouth. “I’m a zombie and I still stink less than you.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” his mother said.
“Sorry,” Max said.
“Can she stay with us?” Neil said.
“Only until the end of the zombie invasion,” his mother said. “I better call your mom and dad.”
“They’re dead,” Max said. “But I know my grandma’s phone number, too.”
Neil ignored them for a minute
. He grinned. Pretending to shoot zombies was going to be a lot more fun with Max around.
Read More!
Tales Told Under the Covers:
Zombie Girl Invasion & Other Stories
Featuring...
The Scaredy Wizard of Theornin
Bullies. Astra knew that she didn’t have to do what Cormish wanted just because he knew that she’d stolen a bunch of stuff from the smokehouse by the river. If he told on her, all her parents would do would be to give her a stern talking to: it wasn’t like they’d be surprised that she’d stolen something. Again.
But from the way Cormish grabbed her arm, so hard that she was sure it would leave bruises, she knew that if she told him off, he’d find something worse to threaten her with, until she did do it. And it wasn’t like she could hide from him, not in Theornin.
So she told him she would get into the wizard’s house somehow and steal his spellbook, but insisted that it would take more than five minutes to figure out how to do it, so could he please stop breathing down her neck and glaring at her already? It was distracting, and if ever there was a time she didn’t need to get caught, it was this time.
Author Information
I grew up telling my brother and cousins stories on our farm whenever we got bored. I would start up the story, and everybody would act it out. We got in lots of fights over who was boss of the story, and we lost a lot of pretending time to our stupid arguments! I once got so mad that I told my brother we were playing hide and seek instead and locked him in the shed where he was hiding. I think he forgave me…eventually.
I live in Colorado with my husband, daughter, and cat.
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