Zombie Elementary (7 page)

I’m not about to tell you all about
the first couple of Pirate batters up. I can only say that Joey Chicka enjoyed the best pitching he’s ever done.

Not that Joey could pitch worth a lick. He could throw at a tree stump and give the thing a walk. If he gets one ball out of three anywhere near the plate, it’s a good day in baseball for Joey and his dad.

But, first guy came out, stumbled around, Joey pitched, guy fell down. Umpire signaled he was out.

Second guy stood there, waving his bat like he’d never seen it before. Struck out as soon as Joey threw the third pitch. Guy tried to bite a kid carrying water and staggered back to the dugout. Thing about these zombies was—far as I could tell—when they first turned they were just dopey. Slow, stupid. Like, undead but draggy. It took a while before they
got all “
NNGAARRRGGGGHHH
!!!!” and started attacking people. I’m not counting the water boy as a real attack. Kid just stepped out of the way and gave the batter a dirty look.

Dirty looks won’t get you far with real motivated zombies, I can tell you.

And talking of which, Alex was up third in the batting order.

Joey was feeling pretty confident now. Too confident. People with no talent should never get too confident. (My tip for the day.)

He pitched. Alex wasn’t really standing like a batter was supposed to. He was frothing and making hissing noises and sorta swaying from one foot to
the other. The ball came and he swatted at it with one hand. Really, that’s not legal. I could show you in the rules. Ball connected and went off toward Joey. Easy catch, you’d think. Only Joey’d finally got the message that something was real wrong in today’s game. Soon as Alex hit the ball, he let out this enormous yell (which I recognized right away as “
BRAAIIINNNSSS
!” although a non-zombie-expert might just think it was a shriek of pain). Either way, Joey’s great day on the pitcher’s mound kind of—what’s the word—evapeerated?

Joey ran like heck, so nobody was there to make a real easy catch. Not that I think that part really mattered, because Alex did not drop the bat and run to first like he should have. He stumbled across the diamond, ignoring first base. He was headed straight for
Jermaine, who threw his cap right in front of Alex, sorta like a bullfighter, you know? Alex swung the bat at Jermaine’s cap and hit it. Or he might not have. Doesn’t matter much—it’s only a cap. Can’t turn a cap into a zombie cap. Either way, Alex dropped the bat, tripped over his own leg and sorta veered off in my direction.

Dang, he was coming right at me!

(Whoops, I guess that’s a bad word. Can you edit that part out?)

Anyhow, Alex had gotten a pretty good bit of speed for a shambling corpse. Or maybe it just seems that way when a ghoul is coming for you. I felt like I was rooted to the ground. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. I was a goner. I was lunch. I was ten seconds from being a zombie—

And then Jermaine swiped Alex over the head with the bat he had just dropped. Best strike Jermaine Holden ever made.

Alex hit the ground hard. I hit the ground about half a second later. I was out like a light.

They were gonna take me to the hospital,
but John’s mom told the coach and umpire I’d only fainted, and she’s a nurse, so they had to listen. Which was good, I guess, because they did call an ambulance for Alex, and I did not want to share an ambulance with him, even if he’d been knocked cold by my best friend and second baseman.

Anyway, the coaches and the umpire were having a real yelling match. It was hard to know what they were really arguing about, except that Jermaine was in a whole lot of trouble for hitting an opposing player with a bat. Coach Chicka was shouting that Alex had broken the rules by running right across to second instead of going to first; the Pirates’ coach was upset about the whole skull-smacking thing; and the umpire was mad because the game had sorta come unglued. It was only the bottom of the first, after all.

None of them seemed to have seen that there was anything wrong at the ballpark. I figured the adults couldn’t get their heads around “game abandoned due to zombies on field.”

I guess about half the players had gone home with their moms and dads, and the rest had just run away. Except for those guys hanging around in the dugout with the crazy staring eyes and the drooling and—

Holy %*&^!!!! They got the water boy this time!

Jermaine’s dad pulled up in their Ford Explorer, and we jumped in right away. “Lock the doors and drive, Pop!” Jermaine’s dad’s always in a hurry, so he didn’t argue.

He did seem surprised when we went to the McDonald’s drive-thru and neither of us wanted anything to eat.

“You guys must be getting sick or something!”

Like that was the worst thing in the world.

The worst thing in the world was happening, and none of the grown-ups were catching on at all.

We didn’t go to Cheesehead Ed’s Pizza
that night. I know that surprises you, cause we always went there after games, but Jermaine said something about being “persona non bratwurst” with the coach, and I really wasn’t in the mood, what with the fainting and the zombie trying to bite me in the face. The grown-ups would only have griped the whole time, anyway. We were up by four when the game got called, and nobody likes that.

So, Jermaine and I were in his room.

“Thanks for … you know,” I said.

He grinned at me. “Yeah, best hit of the season for me.”

I thought about it. “You are gonna be in a whole lot of trouble with the league for hitting Alex like that. Hitting another player over the head with a bat is a
serious no-no. I mean, I think it’s illegal. Like Juvenile Court illegal, not just Little League suspension.”

“Sure it’s illegal. But did you want me NOT to do it? I mean, just tap him on the shoulder and tell him to play nice?” Jermaine had me there.

“No, I mean, I’ll stand up for you. I’ll say Alex was trying to, you know—”

“Bite your face off and rip out your guts with his bare hands and turn you into a living corpse bent on cannibalistic, um, something?”

Yeah. It did sound like stuff you couldn’t say to an adult. Especially an important adult, like a principal or a judge or the tribunal of Little League officials.

“Come on,” said Jermaine. “This is bigger than baseball. We have to do some more research. Someone has to take on the zombies. It’s not gonna be the coaches or the teachers or even the cops. It has to be people like us.”

I was still figuring out this whole “bigger than baseball” thing when Jermaine turned on the TV. He was gonna put a DVD in
—Land of the Dead
, maybe?—when the “Breaking News!” sign came flashing on. Some local reporter was standing by the
side of a highway with a microphone, telling us about an ambulance that had run off the road and rolled down the bank.

“We don’t have a lot of confirmed information, Bob, but it seems the ambulance swerved through the barrier and went down the embankment. The authorities aren’t telling us very much, but a witness said the vehicle suddenly lost control for no apparent reason. No, no sign of any casualties. I’m hoping to talk to the police officer in charge in just a few minutes.”

Jermaine looked at me. I looked at him. His mom brought Pop-Tarts, but we didn’t eat any of them.