Flip This Zombie (12 page)

“Ha, ha,” I said with a sneer.

Dave climbed down onto the van and jumped to the ground between us. “Okay, children, enough. Sorry we didn’t shoot, kid, but we were trying to catch this fucker.”

The little boy glared at us again, but this time his
expression said he thought we were cuckoo. Not that I blamed him really, although I was still thrilled to look up and see a zombie swinging from the overhang.

“Catch one? You two are crazy.”

“That’s probably an understatement,” I said with a grin for David.

The little boy didn’t smile back. Instead, he reared back and kicked me straight in the shin with all his might.

“You still should have shot it.”

And
that
was how we met Robbie, otherwise known as “The Kid.”

T
he Kid reminded me of Bart Simpson. He had blond hair that was probably once lovingly combed into place for school pictures by his mom, but apparently he’d been left to his own devices for a while now because it was currently spiked up from dirt and not enough personal grooming. Oh, and he kept going on about a skateboard, which was apparently his major mode of transportation until it got broken by the same zombies who were chasing him across the parking lot.

Not to mention, he was kind of a little punk, as my bruised shin was throbbing testament to.

I glared at him as he sat in his place on the curb in front of the mall. He was eating some kind of no-name snack cake, his grubby little gross fingers leaving chocolaty smears around his mouth.

“So… now we have him,” Dave said with a heavy sigh. “What do you want to
do
with him?”

I glared at The Kid. “Kick him back when he’s not ready for it.”

Dave stared at me for a long moment and then slowly extended his finger (I won’t say which one, you can guess) upward toward the net that swung above us in the breeze.

“I meant what do you want to do about
that
?”

I shook my head and looked up. The creature was still thrashing around and growling at us, but apparently the infected don’t have much stamina (or maybe this particular one just didn’t have any in life or something) because his movements had become more sluggish and his growls less aggressive and harsh. Poor little guy was just getting tuckered out.

“We have to get him down, I guess,” I said.

The Kid snorted from behind us and both of us turned to stare at him. He smirked as he wiped his dirty hands on what had once been pale blue jeans and said, “You’re
really
smart, right?”

I’ve never wanted to strike a child as much as I did at that moment. I probably would have, too, but Dave caught my arm and held me in place.

“Sarah,” he said low and near my ear.

“Look,
Robbie
,” I said, using the name The Kid had given us when we demanded an introduction after he kicked the hell out of my leg. “You’re just a little brat, okay, so don’t pretend you know something about catching zombies that we don’t. Why don’t you run along?”

“Sarah!” David gasped in disbelief. When I looked at him he shook his head. “You really want to send the kid off on his own, unarmed in an apocalypse? What is he, ten?”

“I’m almost twelve, actually,” The Kid interjected with
a been-there-done-that look. “Or I will be in six months. And I
don’t
need your help.”

“You needed it a minute ago,” I said, barely resisting the urge to stick my tongue out at him.

He shrugged. “I guess, but just so you know, I would have figured it out even if I
hadn’t
seen you two.”

I stared at him. He was an annoying little twerp, but you couldn’t help but be impressed by him. After all, he wasn’t even a teen and was apparently alone after three months of zombie un-awesomeness. So he was probably right he would have figured it out.

I returned my attention to the swinging zombie pendulum above us since anything I had to say to The Kid at that point wouldn’t have been particularly useful.

“We can lower him to the ground pretty easily with the pulley system,” I said as I stared again at our prey. “But then how do we secure him? He’ll thrash all over the place in the back of the van. And if he got loose…”

I shuddered at the thought of being trapped in such a small space with a zombie.

Dave was silent as he pondered that, but before he could give me his answer, The Kid piped up again. “You could lower him halfway and then use a rope to tie him tighter. You two geniuses
do
have a rope, don’t you?”

“Yes, we have a fucking rope,” I said through clenched teeth.

The Kid shrugged. “Well, it would be easy. Just spin him like a piñata.”

I stared, partly because it was a pretty good plan and partly because the kid’s mouth was full of something. Again.

“Where are you getting so much food?” I asked as I
watched him pop a Starburst into his mouth and toss the wrappers at his feet.

Without blinking, he pointed to his cargo jean pockets.

“Those are bad for your teeth,” I snapped, even though I had to admit I wanted one myself. But I wasn’t about to ask
him
to share. I shook my head and returned my attention to David. “What do you think? Would that work?”

My husband nodded. “It’s probably our best bet. And maybe we can use one of those burlap sacks from the old head-collecting days to cover his head and tie it, too. Less chance for grazing bites.”

“Alrighty,” I agreed.

“Do I get a cut?” The Kid asked as we started back toward the van so Dave could climb up on the awning and run the pulley system and I could grab the rope from one of our color-coordinated storage containers.

I stared at The Kid in confusion. “What?”

“Look, I’m not stupid just because I’m younger than you,” the little boy said as he folded his arms and stared at me with the most jaded expression I’d ever seen. Even Dave couldn’t have topped this one. “If you two are going to this much trouble to catch a zombie, rather than exterminate it like your stupid van says, my bet is you’re going to get paid for it, right? So do I get a cut?”

Dave snorted out a laugh as he started to climb up onto the van. “Don’t kill him, Sarah,” he called back to me.

I decided not to deny what The Kid was saying because it would just take too long. “What do you mean, do you get a cut? Why would
you
get a cut?”

“It’s
my
zombie you caught.”

I stared. “What do you mean
your
zombie? It was chasing you, it wasn’t your pet.”

He ignored me. “
And
it’s my idea that you’re using to tie it up. So I should get a cut.”

I shut my eyes and slowly counted to ten in my head as I tried desperately to remember that this was a child who was probably pretty traumatized by everything he had seen and done in the months since the outbreak. But when I looked at him again, all I saw was brat. And snot-nosed brat at that. Gross.

“No way,” I sneered.

The Kid got to his feet, sending empty candy wrappers to blow away on the breeze as he folded his arms. “Yes way.”

Above us, Dave sighed. “Am I going to have to separate you two?”

I glanced up at him. Although he had a joking tone to this voice, his face was tired. I frowned. Clearly I was creating more stress for him than he needed and over what? Some bratty little kid who would be gone from our lives before sundown. It wasn’t worth it.

Without another word, I turned my back to him and grabbed a long coil of rope from the back of the van. Positioning myself near the thrashing zombie, I gave David the thumbs-up signal.

“Ready!”

With the dead weight of the zombie in the net, Dave had to work a little harder to ease the netting down toward me slowly, but after a lot of grunting and swearing, he had gotten the net even with me, but still slightly off the ground.

The zombie hissed and growled at me, pressing his face against the net so hard that the fabric bit into his rotting flesh and left raw hash marks across his cheeks and lips that would never heal.

“Settle down, buddy,” I said as I tried to catch his
lurching form to start the rope around him. He kept moving and flinching though, so I couldn’t tie him up.

“Fuck!” I said as he gave me the slip another time. “I need another set of hands.”

Dave stared at me and I stared up at him for a minute before both of us slowly turned toward The Kid.

He had moved to the front of the van and was now leaning on it nonchalantly, one ankle crossed over the other. He smiled as I looked at him.

“What’s my cut?” he asked, enunciating each word with a smug smile.

I shook my head.
This
was why I didn’t have kids. Finally I growled, “You can have twenty percent of whatever we get for the zombie.”

“Fifty,” the kid snorted.

Dave’s cackle of laughter was the answer. “No way. We caught it, we’re driving it and loading and unloading it. Twenty-five.”

“Thirty,” The Kid said without even hesitating or blinking. “And ammo.”

I bit my lip and nodded. “Fine. Now come here and help me.”

To his credit, once the deal had been made, The Kid hopped to it. He ran over, dodging the straining, clawing fingers and gnashing teeth of the zombie, and grabbed one end of the rope.

“Okay, first we need to pull his arms tight,” I said. “And then wrap him up with the rest of the rope and tie it off.”

To my surprise, there was no debate or argument from The Kid. He just swept his side of the rope around the infected creature in the net and we hurried to wrap the rope around him so that his arms were now fully bound
at his sides. Around and around we went, trading sides to bind the creature up until he was bound like an old-fashioned play about a girl tied to a railroad track by Snidely Whiplash.
Mwahahaha
…

“That looks good, now tie him off,” Dave called from above as we swept the rope around the zombie a final time.

By now he was squirming like an angry caterpillar forced into a cocoon. He still snapped at us through the rope, black sludge pouring from his gray lips as he gnawed at the netting.

I took the other side of the rope from The Kid and started to work on knotting the ends together, but I didn’t make much progress before he let out a sigh and snatched them away from me.

“Jeez, lady,” he said as he gave me a ‘You-Are-A-Stupid-Adult’ look. “Learn to tie a knot, why don’t you?”

I watched as he crossed and recrossed the rope a few times and finally came out with the tightest, most complicated knot I’d ever seen.

“Where did you learn to do
that
?” I asked, sort of stunned into grudging respect as I tugged at the knot and it didn’t give even a fraction.

He shrugged. “I was in Boy Scouts before—”

He cut himself off and turned away. It was one of the few times I saw The Kid really look like he felt anything bad about the apocalypse. Like all of us, he had a coping mechanism for forgetting life Before Zombies. The little reminder of a Boy Scout knot made him more like a kid again to me. I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

“Hey,” I said softly. “I’m going to put the sack over
his head. Do you think you could use one of those super knots to tie it off around his neck, too?”

He nodded and when he looked at me again any regret or childlike heartbreak I’d seen in his face was gone. Jaded Kid was back.

“Whatever.”

I stifled a smile as I returned to the back of the van and grabbed a burlap sack. It would hold a zombie head like it had so many times before… only this time it would be one attached to a body.

When I returned to the netted infected I looked at him. There wasn’t an obvious way to get the sack over his face now that I considered it. The net drew shut above him, which meant you couldn’t really pull something over top of his rotting skull. There was no choice to it, I was going to have to free his head.

I withdrew my knife from the sheath at my thigh and carefully cut one or two of the net’s ropes. I didn’t want to do too much in case we wanted to use this netting method again, but just enough to give the zombie space to push his head out. It didn’t take long before he realized he could do just that. Straining against the binds, he shoved his head through the spot and resumed biting in my general direction. His teeth, grey from rot and stained from sludge, snapped as they gnashed together, grinding with the anticipation of devouring human flesh and blood.