App of the Living Dead Read online

  KIM HARRINGTON

  STERLING CHILDREN’S BOOKS and the distinctive

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  © 2017 Kim Harrington

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  ISBN 978-1-4549-2618-4

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  Design by Ryan Thomann

  The first sign that something was wrong was Robbie Martinez projectile-vomiting in science class. We were learning about viruses. And though I didn’t think it was barf-worthy, we all have our own threshold for gross. Apparently Robbie’s was thinking about a virus invading and reproducing in previously healthy cells. Or so I thought. But when Isaac made the liquid scream in math when we were only talking about ratios, I started to wonder if something else was going on.

  “Hey, Bex.” My best friend and neighbor, Charlie Tepper, came up to me in the hall with a concerned look. “Why is everyone eating backward today?”

  I struggled to pull a book from the pile in my locker without making the rest of them come tumbling out, too. “Must be some kind of stomach bug.”

  Charlie grimaced. “I remember last year in Runswick a norovirus went around and half their school got it. That’s how contagious it can be. They had to close the school for a week and bring in a cleaning crew.”

  “Gross.” I closed my locker door and turned around. My friend Willa Tanaka staggered up to us, clutching her stomach.

  “Willa!” I cried. “Are you sick, too?”

  She shook her head, and her long black hair flowed from side to side as in one of those slow motion commercials. “I don’t have whatever this illness is. But I just watched Mr. Durr upchuck a week’s worth of groceries on the whiteboard. So that made me a little woozy.”

  Yikes. This flu was tearing through school fast. I really didn’t want to stick around and risk catching it, but I couldn’t just walk out. Maybe I could call my parents and ask them to get me released.

  “Bex,” a voice called from behind me. “Bex!”

  I turned around to see Marcus Moore waving at me from the doorway to the computer lab. My heart sped up. Marcus was the fourth in our little group—Charlie, Willa, Marcus, and I made up the Gamer Squad. Self-titled, but still totally cool. We’d saved the town from video game monsters over summer vacation and an accidental alien invasion in September. My phone was responsible for both disasters, and I still felt a little guilty about that. But it had been a month without drama, and things seemed okay. Mostly because we’d agreed never to play mobile games from Veratrum Games ever again since they’d developed both games that had gone so wrong. In fact, if Veratrum’s latest game were called Flu City instead of Zombie Town, I would have wondered if they were involved with the puke-a-palooza going on right now.

  Even though Marcus was one year older, he and I had a lot in common. We were awesome gamers; we both wanted to be programmers; and we both agreed that Speedy’s Pizza was far superior to the Wolcott House of Pizza, which was an unpopular opinion in town.

  I’d had a crush on Marcus forever. Back in September, my dream came true when he told me he liked me. But now it was October, and we’d never really talked about it since. I’d been hoping that he’d ask me to the Halloween Dance, but he hadn’t. At this point, it was only a week away; so my high hopes were currently somewhere in my shoes.

  “Bex, c’mere!” Marcus waved excitedly.

  Willa poked me in my side. “Go see your lover boy.”

  Charlie tried to cover a chuckle with his hand.

  I rolled my eyes at both of them.

  The four of us had been spending a ton of time together since the Gamer Squad formed last month. We hung out in school, played games after school, and talked all night on a group chat. Charlie had been my best friend forever. Willa and I were friends when we were little, then not friends when she dumped me for the popular crowd, then friends again. Now we were closer than ever. And Marcus, . . . well . . .

  My stomach did a little flip-flop as I walked toward the computer lab. Was this it? Was Marcus finally asking me to the dance?

  I reached the doorway to the lab and put on my best, nonchalant, totally-not-expecting-you-to-ask-me-to-the-dance-and-I’m-actually-really-chill-right-now-and-not-nervous-at-all fake voice. “Hey, Marcus. What’s up?”

  He motioned for me to come into the room. “I want to show you a game I made.”

  My heart sank. A computer game? I’d gotten my hopes up—again—and he’d only wanted to talk about games—again. I mean, gaming was my favorite hobby and would hopefully one day be part of my career, but a girl wanted to be asked to a dance now and then, too!

  I glanced at the wall clock. “Okay, but I have only three minutes before my next class.”

  Marcus was beaming with pride, but his fingers were trembling a little. Why was he nervous for me to see his game? Was he worried I wouldn’t like it? He led me to the closest computer terminal. His hand hovered over the keyboard.

  “Are you ready?” he asked with a giant smile.

  As I opened my mouth to say yes, the intercom clicked on and our principal, Mr. James, began to speak.

  “The school is releasing early today due to the—” He paused to let out a moderately gross burp. “Due to the illness affecting many students and staff.”

  His voice sounded weird. As he tried to begin his next sentence, he gagged and gurgled. I knew what was coming next, but thankfully the intercom clicked off before we all had to listen to it.

  Marcus’s smile fell.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “You can show me the game tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” he said, nodding, but the disappointment didn’t leave his eyes. Whatever this game was, it seemed really important to him.

  Charlie poked his head into the room. “Did you hear? Mr. James is letting us out early. My mom already got the emergency autocall and texted that she’ll pick us up.”

  “Okay, cool,” I said, reentering the hallway.

  With school canceled, kids were rushing out at record speeds but without the usual glee that came along with the early dismissal because of a snowstorm or holiday. They were either sick themselves or trying desperately to leave without touching anything or anyone. And as Andy Badger recycled his lunch on the floor in front of me in a colorful display, only one question went through my head: Why did this have to happen on Taco Tuesday?

  The next day, I would have many more questions.

  I knew it was time for dinner when an amazing smell wafted out of the kitchen and into the living room where I’d been reading. I poked my head in. “Is it ready yet?”

  My dad turned around to reveal an apron that said MR. GOOD LOOKIN’ IS COOKIN’. He had an abnormally large collection of cheesy aprons. He’d bought one for himself once, and that opened a floodgate for other people to buy him more. My mom, grandparents, neighbors—everyone got him funny aprons, and now it was forever a thing. But that was okay because he used them all and he was an amazing cook.

  “Just pulling the lasagna out now,” he said with the excitement of a kid opening a present.

  I set the table and slid into my usual seat as my mom came out of her office. She had her typical flustered look going on—frizzy hair pointing in all directions, glasses on the top of her head, phone two inches from her eyes. She ran her own on
line personalized jewelry business from our house, which was nice because she was always home but tough because she was never away from work.

  “Catching up on email?” I asked as she sat across from me.

  She looked up from her phone as if she hadn’t even realized I was there. “Oh! Bexley! Um, no emails, just . . .”

  Her voice trailed away as her attention returned to her phone. She pounded on the screen with her finger a few times, then flicked. I knew exactly what she was doing.

  I crossed my arms. “I thought the rule was no gaming at the table.” At least, that had always been the rule—until this month when my parents, of all people, got hooked on a mobile game.

  Mom put her phone facedown on the table. “You’re right, sweetie.” She blew out a breath. “I have a new appreciation for the willpower it must have taken you to stop playing some games. This one really has me.”

  What my parents didn’t know was that the main reason I’d quit the two popular games I’d been addicted to was that they’d both unleashed disasters on the town. But, hey, let’s go with willpower.

  Zombie Town was Veratrum’s biggest hit yet. It seemed like everyone in town was hooked, even people who’d never played a game before. But a promise was a promise, and the Gamer Squad had made a pact to never play it. So I wouldn’t. No matter how cool it looked. We’d also promised to keep our eyes peeled for video game zombies escaping into the real world, but so far the game seemed normal.

  Dad placed the lasagna in the center of the table and served the three of us. But Mom still wasn’t ready to move on to food. She lifted her phone up and waved it in my direction. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it? It’s one of those augmented reality games you like, so the game uses your phone’s camera to put the zombies on the real background. You can see a zombie right here in the kitchen!”

  I smiled weakly and stabbed my fork into the lasagna. “I know, Mom. But I have another computer game I’m enjoying lately. I don’t want to get involved in a new mobile game.”

  “You know what I love the most about it?” she said, her eyes almost glassy. “It’s a zombie game, sure, but it’s not violent. You throw cures at the zombies to save them. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “Yep. I’ve heard.” Boy, had I heard. Every kid at school was talking about it. The teachers. The cafeteria ladies. My favorite librarian. Even our mailman stopped in mid-route to throw a cure at a zombie in our front yard.

  Dad looked at me strangely, his fork paused in midair. “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what?” I asked.

  “You always want to play the latest games and talk about them. This one is so popular. But you don’t want to even try it. I think that’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” my mom piled on. “Try it. It’s just an innocent game.”

  After you bring a herd of monsters and then an army of aliens to town by accident through “innocent games” you feel a little . . . personally responsible. If anyone was going to bring a plague of zombies to town, it wasn’t going to be me. I would not play that game. I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t even look at it.

  I searched my mind for a plausible reason. “It’s too popular,” I blurted.

  “What?” Dad asked, confused.

  “I’m sick of playing the same games as everyone else. I’m interested in more obscure games.” The classic hipster gamer excuse. Brilliant. If I could have reached around and patted myself on the back without looking suspicious, I would have done it.

  But I might have made them suspicious anyway. Both of my parents were suddenly looking at me with strange expressions. I watched as their faces turned a concerning shade of green. Then my mother clapped her hand over her mouth and ran from the table.

  “Oh, no!” I said. “Do you have that flu that’s going through the school?”

  Dad gazed at the cheesy smear of pasta on his plate, and his mouth turned down. “Excuse me,” he muttered, then dashed away.

  Wonderful. Both my parents were sick. It was only a matter of time before I would have it, too.

  I ate my lasagna and cleared off the table. Then I went upstairs to finish my homework. Before bed, I sent off a quick group text.

  Everyone still healthy?

  Charlie: So far, yeah, but Jason’s stream of vomit just contaminated my science experiment.

  I giggled, totally able to picture that. Charlie did science experiments in his basement for fun, and this wasn’t the first one his older brother Jason had ruined. Jason wanted Charlie to focus on football, but thankfully Charlie wasn’t letting his new involvement in sports interfere with his love of science. He’d even incorporated it into an experiment—testing the speed and velocity of footballs inflated to various psi. My best friend was essentially the king of the nerds—and I loved him for it.

  The others chimed in quickly after Charlie.

  Marcus: I’m good, but my parents both have it.

  Willa: My dance class got canceled because Chloe barfed mid-pirouette. She was like a human lawn sprinkler.

  I started laughing so hard, my cheeks hurt. I loved my friends. After some rocky starts, the Gamer Squad meant everything to me. We’d been through so much we were practically family.

  Meanwhile, my actual family started to ramp it up, taking turns destroying the toilet. My eyes felt heavy, so I shut my phone down for the night and plugged it in to recharge.

  I closed my bedroom door rather than fall asleep to the sweet lullaby of my parents ralphing all over the bathroom.

  I was surprised when my alarm went off in the morning. I’d thought for sure school would be canceled. But the phone never rang with that beautiful no-school robocall. It must have been one of those quick flus, and enough teachers felt well enough to go to work. Oh, well.

  I got dressed in jeans and a white sweater and pulled my giant mess of brown hair up into a ponytail. Yawning, I strolled into the kitchen and got my second surprise. It was empty. In fact, the whole house was eerily quiet.

  “Mom? Dad?” I glanced at the time on my phone. Dad was usually in the shower by now. And Mom would be at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and checking her email.

  Their bedroom and bathroom had been empty when I walked by to head downstairs. I checked my mom’s office, but that, too, was empty. How could my parents be nowhere?

  “You guys?” My voice echoed as I approached the front of the house. I heard a low whistling sound, like a rustling breeze. A window in the living room was open, but it was more than that. I walked to the front door and found it ajar. What in the world?

  I poked my head outside. My parents were nowhere in sight. This made no sense. I marched back into the kitchen to see if they’d left me a note, then stopped, squinting my eyes.

  The little whiteboard where we left messages for each other had only one word: RUN.

  It wasn’t the first time my parents had gone for a morning run before work, but I thought it was a little weird. I mean, they’d been so sick. They definitely weren’t thinking clearly, yet one of them had left the front door open, and the message on the whiteboard was clearly hastily written. But they were finally out of the bathroom, and it seemed like they were feeling better, so I was glad about that. It must have been one of those stomach bugs that comes on fast and strong but leaves quickly. Which was why school hadn’t been canceled. Boo.

  With a groan, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed outside to meet Charlie. We walked to school together every morning. I hoped he hadn’t gotten sick overnight.

  I righted a fallen Halloween decoration—my yard was full of them. Wolcott got kind of competitive around Halloween. People wanted to be known for giving good candy or for their house having cool decorations. But what had started several years ago with a few houses stringing up orange lights and fake ghosts had turned into a competition. My parents had been sucked in, too, and our front yard was riddled with witches, tombstones, and giant plastic spiders.

  I stopped at the sidewalk. A perfect circle of p
uke lay on the walk in front of my house. I raised my eyebrows. Strange. It mustn’t have been from my parents, though. They wouldn’t have gone for a run if they were still sick. I shrugged and made my way to Charlie’s.

  He came out of his house at full speed, zipping up a gray sweatshirt and running his fingers through his messy blond hair.

  “Sorry I’m late!” he said, running toward me. “My mom usually wakes me up but no one’s home. They were up half the night with Jason, so they probably took him to our doctor.”

  “You mean you weren’t by his side taking care of him?” I joked.

  Charlie gagged. “I want no part of his germs. I must have washed my hands a hundred times last night.”

  I laughed and found a pebble to kick. Charlie and I played this game on the way to school where we took turns kicking a pebble the whole way. It wasn’t superfun or anything, but it was tradition.

  After a few blocks, I started to notice something—or, rather, the lack of something. Not one car had passed us. It was early in the morning, sure, but we usually saw a few cars on our way to school. And where were the buses? We hadn’t seen one of those yet, either.

  A chill crept down my back. This was weird.

  Charlie must have realized it, too. He glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Lots of people staying home sick today, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” It was the only thing that made sense. The flu had descended on the town overnight. Everyone was stuck at home.

  Still, it was eerie to approach the school and find the parking lot mostly empty. A couple of kids shuffled around slowly. One eighth grader I recognized took one look at the school, turned around on his heel, and walked away.

  Marcus and Willa were waiting for us at the entrance, even though we usually met inside.

  “You guys,” Marcus said as we neared them. “It’s a ghost town in there. I thought I saw Mr. Durr going around a corner but no one else.”

  “Then why didn’t they cancel school?” Charlie asked.