The Zombie Chasers by John Kloepfer Read Free Book Online Page A

strolled over, rolling her eyes.
    “But you’re covered in trash….” She hesitated, brushing him off slightly.
    “Please, Madison!”
    “Fine,” she said.
    Madison’s hands squished into Rice’s soggy, garbage-soaked sweatshirt as he wormed his way over the ledge. “This is too disgusting,” she said, letting him fall.
    Rice crashed face-first onto the floor. He curled up like a large potato bug, wincing in agony.
    Zack sat dazed in a sullen lump, rubbing his head. Madison tromped over and wiped off her grimy Rice-hands on Zack’s sleeves. Straightening his glasses, Rice rummaged around in his backpack and pulled out two flashlights. He waggled the bright, shining light on Zack’s unresponsive face.
    “Stop that!” Zack squinted angrily and blocked the blinding beam with his palm. “Let’s just go gather up the ‘bingo globula’ and see if you’re right.”
    “Ginkgo biloba,” Rice corrected. “And it’s gonna work.”
    “More like geeko blobola,” Madison joked. “And it better work.”

CHAPTER 9
    M oonlight shimmered in through the glass storefront, sparkling off the polished floor. Standing by the long row of conveyor-belted registers, Zack, Madison, and Rice stared outside into the immense parking lot.
    “They can smash right through there,” Zack said.
    “Easily,” Madison said.
    “Bet that’s awesome,” Rice muttered, fetching a shopping cart from behind the checkout lanes.
    They crept up and down the towering aisles and tiptoed into the vitamin section, stocked with big whitetubs of protein powders and dark brown plastic containers labeled with all the letters of the alphabet. Zinc. No. Calcium. Nope. Garlique…Cod liver oil. Echinacea? St. John’s wort? What is all this junk? Zack thought.
    “Ginkgo biloba! Here it is!” Zack said.
    They swept clean the four rows of anti-zombie tablets into the shopping cart. As they rolled their stash to the back of the store, Zack watched Madison’s horrified reflection in the rounded glass of the butcher case. Raw chicken carcasses were on display, along with dead-eyed fish and jumbo shrimp, not to mention the slabs of flank steak and mounds of ground beef. They stopped in the dim blue perma-glow of the frozen-food section, where they spotted an elevator. They carted the ginkgo onto the lift and rose to the second floor.
    Upstairs, the doors shut behind them, and Rice, Madison, and Zack gazed down the long corridor. A pale blue wedge of light shone through the thin slit of a door, slightly ajar, at the end of the hall. A placard on the door read MANAGER’S OFFICE .
    The shopping cart wheels squeaked as they pushedthrough the open door. Inside, the floor was a wide expanse of dirty beige tiles, and the ceilings were too low. In the near corner, a cheap tasseled throw rug covered the floor in front of a brown vinyl sofa, which sat opposite a big flat-screen television. Farther down the same wall, a doorway led to a small kitchen equipped with a sink, a fridge, and a couple of dirty counters. A cockroach skittered behind the microwave. The whole office was painted puke green, and it stank of sour mop water.
    “This place is perfect,” Rice said, spinning around.
    “You have got to be kidding,” Madison muttered.

    Zack steered the shopping cart over to the desk and unloaded the ginkgo biloba. He dumped out a mountain of gray capsules on the manager’s desk and snapped one in half. A small dose of powder spilled on the desk calendar. “How much of this stuff do we need?” Zack asked.
    “A whole lot, man,” Rice said, looking at his reflection in a mirror. He was inspecting the red spots covering his face. “Madison, you better help him out,” Rice said as he pulled a small prescription bottle of pink liquid and a few Q-tips from his sweatshirt pocket. He twisted off the cap and daubed at his pox with the pink, goopy cotton swab.
    “This was your idea, you nasty little pock mongrel,” Madison complained.
    Rice plopped down on the