Max Random And the Zombie 500 by Mark London Williams

Author:Mark London Williams [Williams, Mark London]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: k'12
Publisher: Trifecta Publishing House
Published: 2017-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

18

Goodbye Angeleno

Dawn came and we still weren’t Nano-Z’s.

“It’s morning, Max,” I said, looking at the light streaming in by the stacks of books wedged by the window. “We made it.”

He nodded. “For now.” He sure went back-and-forth on the “good news” thing. He was gathering up his knives and putting the freeze-dried food I’d spread out on the floor in the backpack for me.

I realized I had been dozing off before. “Max! You let me sleep!” He nodded again. “How long was I out?”

“Not … much. Hour or two.”

“But what if … something happened?”

He turned to look at me. “Something has already happened, Aurora. That’s why we’re here.”

Now it was my turn to nod. Then I stretched, like Jenkins—who’d been curled near me—and started slowly picking things up, especially matches and candles, and the broken pieces of coffee mug that Max had used as a sharpening stone for his blades.

“What’s this?” Max said, pulling the plastic-wrapped bundle out of the backpack. He held it toward me.

He’d found his present. “Open it,” I said.

He did. He still couldn’t tell what it was. Even Max didn’t know everything.

“It’s a solar charger, Max. For camping.”

“Power,” he said, with a contented nod.

“You can use it for the phones or anything else we find. I figured I wasn’t going to show it to you unless … ” I let the sentence trail off.

“Unless we were still alive?”

“Unless, until we had some light again, so you could see it work. I wanted to save it ’til morning. Merry Christmas,” I said.

“But it’s not—”

“Oh, Max.”

“Well, then, you take a present too.” He held out one of the knives. “Keep it on you. So we can at least make it to New Year’s. Maybe even April Fools.” It was a strange joke, but then, it was one of Max’s. Plus I noticed he skipped Valentine’s Day. Of course, that would’ve been weird, and we both would’ve blushed. I looked for a place to strap the knife to my trousers, like some kind of video game hero.

We had everything packed except the cat and were trying to figure out how to take him, when a sudden loud thunking began right outside the room.

Without discussing it, we scooped up Jenkins and put him in the backpack, leaving his head sticking out like those baby-carriers you used to see. Back when there were babies.

Max was about to put the pack on when I took it from him. “You hold the knives,” I said. “I’ll take this.”

We had to go back through the kitchen to get out the door where we’d left the kart parked by the porch.

Somebody had already gotten into the house, though, and was waiting for breakfast too.

It was the boy with the missing eye, the one who’d been tangled under the wheels. “Little John,” Max whispered to me.

“What?” I whispered back.

“Looks like him. A little.” I hoped the real Little John had had both his eyes. With the one the zombie had left, he actually blinked at us.

“Yrrrg?” he asked.

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