The Living Dead Boy Read Free

danger.”
    “Yeah, my Mom freaks if I sneeze,” Arturo agreed. “She’d go buy a bazooka or something.”
    “And your Dad would probably be recalled to Fort Hood,” Roger added, vigorously rubbing his nose.  He was always sneezing and having trouble with his allergies. “They’d be boarding up the windows like in Night of the Living Dead .”
    “Yeah, well, sometimes parents are stupid,” Josh answered grimly.  His mom never wanted to hear anything about zombies or his theories on a government conspiracy to hide their evil experiments that had created the zombies. “And they can be total douches.”
    That brought on some snickers of agreement then his friends were out the gate and into the alley.  The brothers lived two houses down, Arturo three.  Most of the houses didn’t have fences and the boys ran shouting and laughing toward their homes, cutting past their neighbors backyards.
    With a sigh, Josh shut the gate and locked it.  His Paw Paw had built the fence when the neighbor kids had kept running through his garden.  Now the garden and Paw Paw were gone, and Josh felt cut off from the rest of the world whenever he looked at the tall oak fence.  He liked that.  It was a good defense against zombies.  Of course, all his Mom could talk about was how it made it safe for them to play outside.
    Josh thought this was a joke.  Just because they were living in a tiny town in the middle of Texas Hill Country, that didn’t mean they were safe.  He’d rather be living back at Fort Hood with all his old friends, surrounded by soldiers and their weapons.  Instead they were living in Paw Paw and Mee Maw’s old house, and it was so old the floors were kind of slanted.  His Dad said it was because the house was settling.  Josh was pretty sure it was going to fall apart.  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.  Their old house in Killeen, Texas would have withstood a zombie assault for at least a few days.
    With a sigh, he trudged across the spacious backyard toward the house painted in light blue with dark blue trim. Both the Texas and American flags hung on a flagpole just inside the fence in the sideyard. Paw Paw had been a patriot.  He had been ecstatic when Jamie, Josh’s dad, had enrolled in the Marines. He’d been in the Marines during the Vietnam War and had been very proud of his service.  When he had died, Josh had been impressed by his burial. An honor guard had attended the funeral and had presented Mee Maw with the flag that had been draped over his casket.  It wasn’t until later, when his Dad had been in Iraq, that he had understood the significance of the flag and his great-grandmother’s tears.
    The screen door swung open and his mom stared down at him.  “Stop dawdling.”
    “I’m not dawdling, Mom.”
    “You’re dragging in here because you know you’re in trouble.”
    “I didn’t do anything,” Josh answered defensively. He yanked off his cap as he entered the laundry room that led into the kitchen at the back of the house.
    The delicious aroma of simmering chili mixed with the pungent smell of silver cleaner.  An entire silver serving set was on the kitchen table, half of it polished to a brilliant shine, the other half grungy and mottled green.  It reminded him of zombie skin.  He had a feeling his mom was upset not because of Drake acting like a brat, but because she was selling off family heirlooms again to pay the bills.  Since Mee Maw and Paw Paw died within two months of each other, Josh knew that they were in a bad financial crisis.  He hated it.
    “That’s right.  You didn’t do anything to keep your brother entertained while I cooked dinner and tried to get this stuff ready to mail off to that lady who bought it on eBay.  I told you I have to get this done.”  His mother swept her hair out of her face, her huge blue eyes glimmering with tears.
    A cool breeze was wafting through the open windows, but it was still humid in the kitchen from the