THE ZOMBIE PLAYGROUND

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Anaya covered her eyes with her hands as Brin sped the golf cart toward the opening. Some of the zombies wisely moved out of the cart’s path, but others stayed put. And even though Brin didn’t think a golf cart, versus, say, a giant tank, could do much damage, she was shocked to see the zombies fall to the ground so quickly. A large glass screen covered the front of the cart, so the first three zombies to go down left their bloody yellow marks on the dash.

“It’s working!” Brin shouted. “Anaya, it’s working!”

Anaya still had her hands over her eyes. “I’m not looking!”

Brin felt the tires roll over the bodies, crushing heads and necks, rocketing Brin and Anaya back and forth on the golf cart seat like they were on a wild rollercoaster.

She pushed past the last of the clan and emerged victorious into the sunlight, running over Anaya’s uncle’s split-open head for good measure.

“We made it,” Brin said. “We’re free!”

“Can I open my eyes now?”

“Open them!”

Anaya looked out. This cart wasn’t creeping forward at five miles per hour; it was zooming at top speeds, like an extra jolt of caffeine had been added to the engine. 

Brin passed over the fairway of the fourth hole and kept the three-story clubhouse as her point of destination.

“Do you see the others?” Brin said.

“No. Where do you think they are?”

“They have to be in the clubhouse by now, or maybe the parking lot. That’s where our cars are. That’s how we get out of here!”

“Do you think they left us behind?”

“Well if you hadn’t stormed off in the other direction, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this mess!”

“No, but—”

Anaya didn’t have a chance to speak her mind, because in mid-sentence a zombie latched onto the back bumper of the cart, pulled himself up, and grabbed Anaya’s hair. 

“Oh my God!” she shouted.

“Oh shit!” Brin said.

“Get him off me!”

The creature, this one with no family ties to Anaya, was moaning louder than all the others combined. He had his mouth wide open, like he wanted to swallow Anaya’s head whole, as he gripped tightly onto Anaya’s curly brown hair and swiped his rotting hands at her plump cheeks.

Brin reached the top of a hill. “OK, Anaya. Just hold on. One more minute.”

“One more minute? I don’t have one more second!”

Brin slammed the pedal to the metal and the golf cart roared down the hill, toward the eighteenth hole green, toward the clubhouse. The zombie started crawling his way farther and farther into the cart.

“Hold on,” Brin said.

“He’s got me!” Anaya said. “Oh God, he’s gonna eat me!”

“Ten seconds!”

“What? No!”

“Nine seconds!”

The zombie pulled himself up over Anaya, wrapped his fingers against her cheeks, and started licking her forehead.

“Brin!”

“Three seconds!”

“Brin! For God’s sake!”

“Two!”

“He’s gonna eat me!”

“One!”

“One?”

“Hold on!”

Brin closed her eyes as the cart struck a tree at thirty miles per hour. The zombie flew forward and crashed through the glass, catapulting into the air and landing on his neck on gravel pavement forty yards up ahead.

Anaya promptly fell out of the cart and hit the grass. “Oh my God…”

Brin opened her eyes. Pieces of glass, hunks of hair, and spatters of gooey yellow blood covered the front of the cart. Brin turned to her right to see Anaya pressing her hands against her forehead.

“Anaya? Are you OK?” Brin stepped out of the cart and promptly cracked her neck. She had whiplash, but she didn’t feel injured. 

Brin looked up to see blood—the normal red kind—running down Anaya’s forehead. “I hit… I hit my head…”

“Oh God,” Brin said, rushing up to the girl to analyze the damage.

“My head… it hurts…”

“Let me see.”

“Was it the zombie? Did he bite me?”

Brin wiped the blood away to see a large cut at the top of her forehead. “No. Oh, thank God. No, you just hit your head when we crashed.”

“Why did we crash?”

“I had to kill the zombie.”

“Did it work? Is he dead?”

Brin stepped to the side of the cart. The zombie had cracked his head open. The yellow blood matter stained the ground all the way from the pavement to the clubhouse side door.

“Uhh, yeah,” Brin said. “He’s a goner.”

“Are there others coming?”

Brin turned around. Many were stomping their way toward them, twenty at least. Zombies of all shapes and sizes, of all genders and sexual orientations, of all social and economic backgrounds, of all gruesome and morbid visages of death, were marching toward Brin and Anaya down the steep hill.

“Come on,” Brin said, grabbing Anaya’s hand and leading her around the clubhouse.

Anaya wiped most of the blood from her forehead. “Look! Brin! A door!”

“No,” she said. “We’re not going in there.”

“Why not?”

Brin grabbed the car keys from her pocket. “I drove here. I’ve got my Jeep. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Brin jumped in front of Anaya and ran for the parking lot. As she circled around the clubhouse, Brin again recognized the adrenaline rushing through her veins. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t thirsty. She wasn’t even tired. She had been running for what seemed like an hour or more, and yet she felt like she could run for the rest of the day. As recently as last semester, she could barely run a lap around the Grisly High football field without collapsing in a heap of embarrassment, but that mentality had certainly changed in the last two weeks. As she turned the corner to the parking lot, she shook her head in amazement: there’s something about getting chased, especially from those who want to eat you, that keeps you going and going and going…

She spotted her car in the distance and ran frantically toward it.

But then she stopped. Something was wrong.

Oh no.

Her precious Jeep was upside down.

“What the hell,” Brin said, as Anaya abruptly bumped into her from behind. 

They looked forward to see at least fifteen zombies annihilating her flipped-over car, breaking the windows, striking the bumper, destroying the tires with crowbars.

“What the hell are they doing?” Anaya said. “Why would they want to destroy your car?”

Brin took a step forward. Her jaw dropped when she heard the screams coming from inside.

“Oh no!” Brin shouted. “Noooooooo!”

Ash and Paul were in the car.