Chapter 22

"Well, pooh." Simi poked her lips out. "That just takes all the fun out of it." She let out a dramatic sigh.

Nick was overwhelmed by the herculean task. How did three high school students get a dozen zombies to Bubba's store without getting eaten?

Why didn't I stay home?

Look on the bright side...

Trouble was, he didn't see a bright side.

I knew should have taken up lumberjackery and not the one where you shoot snot out your nose or the other one he didnt want to think about while fighting. 'Cause face it, both of those would be worthless right about now. Rather lumberjackery where you break Army of Darkness with a chainsaw all over the Deadites and send them into oblivion.

Or at least send them out of his sight.

The zombies closed in. Nick braced himself for more hand-to-hand (literally, in his case) fighting.

Suddenly, Simi grabbed him and Caleb by their hands and ran with them to the corner. She hesitated under the street sign. "Where's Bubba's?"

Nick pointed down the street toward the store.

"Okay." Simi released their hands. "You boys run on and I'll get them there right behind you."

Nick shook his head as all the lessons his mom had taught him roared to the forefront. "That's not right. I'm not about to leave a girl to be eaten by crazies."

Caleb looked over his shoulder to where the zombies were closing in fast. "Folks, we stand here arguing and we're going to die." He grabbed Nick and pulled him forward. "Let her be the bait. We need to get the doors open."

Nick would have fought him too, but Caleb's grip was too fierce, leaving him no choice except to follow or lose his other arm.

They only got half a block before two more zombies stepped out of the darkness to attack them.

Nick cursed as he pulled up short and kicked the first one back into the alley. "How many of these are there?"

Caleb shook his head. "I'm beginning to wonder if Madaug didn't license the game to Sony or something. Where are all of them coming from? Raccoon City Cloning Farm? What is going on here?"

Nick stepped back to avoid being bitten. "We're about to get our butts kicked. That's what's going on." He scissor-kicked the zombie closest to him. Then he looked to see Simi leading the others closer. "I'm beginning to feel like Jim Bowie at the Alamo."

Caleb knocked the zombie in front of him back. "Yeah, but we're not going to die."

I wish I could be so sure of that. 'Cause right now, things were not looking good for him and if he was a betting man, he'd be betting on the zombies.

Even so, Nick pushed his fear and panic down and kept moving toward the store, drawing the zombies along behind him while he continued to beat them off. Gah, if one more of them touched his wounded shoulder, he was going to forget the ban on killing them and go hog wild—chainsawor not. "I really don't like being the dangling carrot."

"Better than being the dead duck." Caleb smacked the zombie closest to him.

He had a good point with that.

Nick was the first one to reach the store. He opened the door and called for Bubba, Madaug, and Mark. "We got a group coming in. You might want to widen that room and be ready to lock it tight."

But getting them into the store was hard enough. Into the room...

Where were the X-Men when you really needed them?

Nick grabbed the cattle prod that Bubba kept hanging on the wall behind the counter... again for those "just in case" moments. He was beginning to not only understand Bubba's paranoia, but be grateful for it.

Bubba was right. You never knew when these things could come in handy. It did pay to keep a cattle prod and axon hand. The necessity of the rocket launcher and blasting caps remained to be seen.

At least the cattle prod would make it easier to corral them. But the moment Nick touched the prod to the zombie closest to him, Brett, he realized Mark and Bubba had made some serious modifications to the voltage. This wasn't a typical cattle prod to move people along. This one was meant to stun and stun hard. The jolt was so severe, it drove the zombie to the floor like a million-volt stun gun.

"What the ... ?" Nick gaped at Bubba, who grinned in all his unabashed glory.

"Neighbors don't complain when I shock people, only when I shoot them."

Mark agreed. "But the downside is it's a pain to drag them out of the store, and if you leave them in here, when they can move again, they're usually pretty pissed and looking for blood."

Madaug, Caleb, and Simi continued to try and beat the zombies into the holding cell.

Nick zapped another zombie that was going for Simi. It was actually kind of fun. He'd touch them with the prod. They'd scream and then flop to the ground like dying fish. Made him wonder what would happen if they were wet, but he wasn't sadistic enough to test that curiosity. Lucky for them.

He shocked another one who went for his head and sent the zombie flailing. A guy could get used to this, especially if he didn't go to jail for it.

By the time Nick had stunned the last one and Bubba and Mark were dragging the first one into the room, they made a "shocking" discovery.

As the voltage wore off, the zombies returned to normal.

"Get your hands off me!" Brett snarled as he shoved Bubba back. "My dad's a lawyer and I'm going to sue you for offensive touching."

Bubba arched a brow. "You might wanna rethink that, boy. 'Cause if I'm going to get sued for offensively touching you, I'm going to make it worth my while. Think about it."

Brett's face paled. He looked around the store as if he was waking up from a nightmare. "How did I get here?"

Nick angled the cattle prod at him, still not trusting that he was completely normal. He'd seen that movie too many times where the idiots think the monster's gotten over whatever had it possessed, only to turn back into the monster and kill them the instant they let down their guard. No way. He wasn't about to become intelligent-zombie kibble. "You were trying to eat my brains, you psycho."

Brett gaped at him. "What?"

Caleb nodded. "It's true, dude. You went for Gautier's throat, and mine too."

Madaug took the prod from Nick so that he could examine the prongs on the end of it. "Wow, Nick. You found the cure. That's how we fix it."

"Electrocution?" Nick tried not to smile as he thought about seriously zapping Stone.

Madaug nodded. "The voltage works on the central nervous system.... I'm thinking it works like a power surge that causes the programming to dump and essentially reboot to the original that existed before they played my game. It reverses everything. Nick! You're a friggin' genius."

Nick rested the cattle prod up on his good shoulder. "Well, someone slap my butt and give me a hero cookie."

Simi stepped forward and slapped him on the right cheek.

"Hey!" Nick snapped, rubbing his offended buttocks.

She blinked innocently. "You told me to. Or would you rather have had one of them men slap your butt instead?"

Nick was horrified by the mere suggestion. "If someone is touching that part of me, I'd much rather it be you than one of them." Or better yet, Kody.

"Us too," the guys said quickly.

As they stood there, one by one the zombies came out of it. All of them were disoriented and baffled by what had happened to them.

And none of the twelve guys on the floor remembered having played Madaug's game.

None of them.

Nick scowled at Madaug. "You think when I shocked them that it caused some kind of memory loss?" Which really worried him since he had a memory lapse himself about how he'd gotten in that courtyard at the Lalauree mansion. Had he been a zombie and not known it?

Please dont let me have eaten any brains.

That was the only thing he knew that could make his mom's powdered eggs taste good.

Madaug scratched his chin as he thought about it. "I don't know. We need a case study."

Bubba paused and turned toward him. "Case study how?"

"We have to get to Brian, shock him, and see," Madaug said. "It's the only way to know for sure since he's the only one I know for a fact was turned into a zombie after playing my game."

Not to be one to ever interject logic into anything, Nick laughed nervously. "You do know he's in jail, right? And that the police tend to get a little perturbed at people who show up there with cattle prods and stun guns. I'm just saying."

Simi jumped up and down. "We could get the police to shoot him for us!"

Mark scoffed. "Our luck, they'd shoot him with a real gun and kill him. Then we'd learn nothing."

Like that was the worst fear they had at the moment....

Yeah.

Madaug didn't relent. "We've got to either get him out or we get in to see him and stun him. Otherwise we don't really know if this is going to work. It could be temporary and they could turn right back into zombies. Think about it."

Nick was thinking about it. He was thinking of spending the rest of his life in jail, provided his mother didn't kill him first. "I don't guess any of you former zombies would like to go into the holding cell until we sort this out?"

Brett seized him by the shirt. "I don't know what game you and geek boy are playing, Gautier. But you getin mywayas I leave and I'll wipe my boots on your balls."

Nick cringed involuntarily at a threat that went down his spine like a shredder.

Before he realized what was happening, Simi had taken Brett's hand and squeezed it so hard Nick heard the bones break.

Brett cried out.

Simi held his hand in hers without letting up. "Nick is a friend of the Simi's. You threaten him and you make the Simi really unhappy and want to eat your head. Trust me, not something you want me to think about. Now go away mean person or the Simi will tell akri she don't know what happened to you and your masticated form. Not that I like to lie, but there are deceptions to every rule. And you're about to become one." She shoved him back toward the room. "Now get in there and be quiet."

By their faces, it was obvious none of them wanted to obey. But none of them had the backbone to stand up to Simi.

Bubba grinned. "I like your friend, Nick. She doesn't mince words, does she?"

"Not really." But then some of the words she didn't mince really didn't make sense, and who the heck was this akri she kept mentioning? He must be some serious badass to corral her.

Mark locked the hidden door and shut the wall so that no one entering the store could see their new prisoners.

Caleb frowned. "What if they start calling for help?"

"Won't do them any good," Bubba said. "It's soundproof and made with enough metal that no cell phones will go through neither. They're there until we let them out."

Mark let out a nervous laugh. "Then let's not get killed and starve them to death."

Nick stared at him. "Mark, there are many, many reasons I don't want to get killed doing this other than just starving the ex-zombie hostages." He looked over to Madaug. "Or go to jail. I cannot stress enough how badly I do not want to go to jail and how badly I do not want to die."

But he had a bad feeling that they were all about to head to one of those places or the other.

Nick?" Mark called through the door as Nick was coming out of the shower. "It's your mom on the phone and she's hotter than Angelina Jolie lying in a bikini on the equator, covered in mud.... Not that I'm saying your mom is good-looking, not that she isn't, but I don't ever fantasize about your mom 'cause that would just be wrong to do to a guy—not that your mom isn't fantasy worthy... but—Ah, hell, all that sounded better in my head. My point is, she's angry. Just take the phone before she scalds my ears some more."

Nick paused. That was an interesting tirade and made him wonder about Mark's daydreams—Wait, never mind. Knowing Mark, those had to be terrifying. Heck, he was lucky Mark's dream girl wasn't zombified.

He opened the door only enough to reach through it to get the phone from Mark before he put it up to his ear and braced himself for her anger. "Hey, Mom."

"What are you doing?" Yeah, she was totally upset at him. That hot tone could melt polar ice caps. She was yelling so loud, he pulled the phone about three inches from his ear and still heard her perfectly. "Boy, where are you? Do you have any idea what time it is? You are so grounded when I see you, which, for your information, had better be soon, as in right now. If you're not walking through the door, which you're not, you're busted. You understand? Nick? Are you listening to me? What do you have to say for yourself? Huh, young man?"

He honestly didn't know what to say that wouldn't make her twice as mad, which was not his goal right now. The name of the game ... survival.

/ value my freedom, but I see severe restriction ahead. Too bad there weren't lawyers out there willing to represent kids with their parents. "Which question do you want me to answer first?"

"Don't you get smart with me, Nicholas Gautier. I'm too mad at you right now to take it."

He had to clamp down on his own temper. If he'd learned anything in his life, it was that his mom didn't react well to direct conflict. A nice, contrite Nicky was often one who avoided being grounded even when he deserved it. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm not trying to be smart." He was trying to get her to stop screaming at him. "I got covered in—" He paused before he said the word "blood." That would flip her out even more." —goo during the class." A small lie, but what she didn't know wouldn't give her a heart attack and him a restriction that lasted until he was bald and middle-aged. "I—um, I wanted to take a bath at Bubba's before I headed back and got goo all over the club, which might get you into trouble." Not to mention the sight of his bloody clothes would have panicked her into calling the police, and the last thing Bubba needed was another arrest on his record. "I should have called and let you know first. I'm really sorry. I guess I spent more time in the shower than I meant to. Did you know Bubba has one of them steam things that comes down from the ceiling? You should see this bathroom, Mom. It's the coolest awesome ever."