Zomburbia Read Free Page A

up and over from behind the shield. There was a dull crack we could hear even through the glass and then the kid’s head was barely attached to his body. It hung there at a weird angle that made me feel sick. But, of course, the kid already being dead, that didn’t stop him. So Chacho swung his club again and caught the kid on the other side of his head. That drove him to the ground.
    Chacho dropped his shield onto the thing’s chest and then put all his weight on top of it. He left the head exposed, though, so he could go to town on it with the club, which he raised and brought down again and again. Pretty soon it went from a cracking sound to something like sucking mud every time he did it.
    After a while, Chacho stood up and the zombie kid didn’t even twitch. Chacho stood over him, bent over with his hands on his knees, and breathed hard. After a few seconds, he took off his helmet and wiped his forehead. He placed his gear on the ground next to the body and grabbed the kid’s legs. He started to drag it toward the incinerator that lives in the back of the store. A wet trail snaked behind him from the kid’s shattered melon.
    I realized that I hadn’t breathed in a while, so I took a deep breath. Sherri and a few others did the same thing. I turned and smiled at Sherri, though it felt forced. She didn’t say anything if she noticed.
    â€œGood times at Bully Burger,” she said, and she sounded a little shaky.
    â€œYeah,” was all I could say.
    We turned and made our way back behind the counter. Phil held the kitchen door open for us, and Sherri must have been feeling generous because she didn’t snarl at him or order him back to the depths of the store, she just mumbled a thanks and returned to the register.
    Brandon and his friends were up at the counter then, Sherri at the register ready to take their order. I stood in front of the grill and Phil was in the back of the store. The only sound I heard was Chacho outside banging open the incinerator door.
    We all stood like that for what seemed like a long time. “Welcome to Bully Burger,” Sherri said finally. “How can I help you?”
    I shuddered and I thought, for the millionth time, that I needed to get the hell out of this town.

CHAPTER TWO
A Topic for Casual Conversation
    I was totally young on the Day the Dead Came Back. Like three or four? The point being, I don’t remember it at all. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But only barely. I remember being scared, mostly because Mom and Dad were scared, and that was something that’d never happened before.
    I have a few concrete memories that I can call up. I remember my dad buying a gun. A shotgun. Now I know it was a cheap pump action from Walmart, but at the time I’d never seen a shotgun, or a gun of any kind, really, except on TV, and I was pretty fascinated by it. I wanted to look at it and hold it. My dad got, like, red-in-the-face mad at me for even bringing it up.
    â€œThis is very bad and dangerous,” he told me as he put it in his closet and then locked the door with a key. There’d never been a lock on it before he brought home the shotgun. “This is only to keep our family safe,” he said as he carried me out of the room. I remember being confused that something so dangerous would keep us safe.
    The only other thing I remember well is sitting on the living room floor in front of the TV. Mom and Dad were behind me on the couch. We all watched the news, which I never really cared about. I sat on the floor playing with Legos or toy ponies or something else stupid little kids do. Then I heard the dude on the TV say something about the dead coming back.
    â€œDoes that mean Grandma is coming back?” I asked.
    Usually when I made these kinds of, what do you call them? Intuitive leaps, right? When I did that, there were two possible reactions. One: Get patted on the head and told that I was right and, gee,