Michael Ford - Z

Suddenly the tiredness that had been growing all night began to overtake him. He leaned back and closed his eyes. Maybe it’s all a bad dream, he thought. Maybe I’ll wake up in my own bed.

He dozed for a few minutes, until the jerking of the ambulance coming to a stop woke him. “We’re here,” Charlie said.

When they walked into Precinct Number 42, Josh felt safe for the first time since leaving his house that afternoon. They were in a police station. They would tell someone their story, Clatter would be arrested, and they could go home. Someone else could worry about the zombies roaming around Feverfew. His career as a Torcher was over.

As they walked to the front desk, they were surrounded by a sudden flurry of excitement. Uniformed policemen ran past, paying no attention to them. There was frantic talking, and the buzzing of com units filled the air as invisible voices shouted directions.

“What’s going on?” Charlie said. “Where are they going?”

Josh turned around to see what was happening. Outside, dozens of police vehicles were starting to pull out of the station lot, their lights spinning. Then he noticed the screen above the door to the building. It was tuned to a local news channel, and although Josh couldn’t hear what the reporter was saying, he saw the word zombies scroll by on the news ticker running below the picture.

He, Charlie, and Firecracker looked at one another. “No!” Josh said.

He looked back at the screen. This time he saw the whole headline: ZOMBIES SIGHTED IN OLD TOWN. GET TO SAFETY. MORE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW. The picture showed a street in Old Town. Half a dozen zombies were lurching down the street. The camera zoomed in on one of them.

Charlie gasped. Then she sobbed. “It can’t be,” she said. “Josh, no. It’s not—”

“It’s Scrawl,” Josh said.

A man approached the zombies. He was wearing a black uniform with a familiar logo on it. He pointed his flamethrower at Scrawl.

“No!” Firecracker shouted.

As fire burst from the flamethrower, Charlie buried her head in Josh’s neck and sobbed. He held her close, telling her that everything would be all right.

But it won’t be, he thought. It will never be all right again.

MICHAEL THOMAS FORD is the author of the teen novel SUICIDE NOTES as well as several essay collections and adult novels, including JANE BITES BACK. He lives in San Francisco with his partner and their five dogs. Visit him online at www.michaelthomasford.com.

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Suicide Notes

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Z

Copyright © 2010 by Michael Thomas Ford

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2010

ISBN: 978-0-062-04313-9

www.harperteen.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ford, Michael Thomas.

Z / Michael Thomas Ford. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: In the year 2032, after a virus that turned people into zombies has been eradicated, Josh is invited to join an underground gaming society where the gamers hunt zombies and the action is more dangerous than it seems.

ISBN 978-0-06-073758-0

[1. Science fiction. 2. Role playing—Fiction. 3. Games—Fiction. 4. Zombies—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.F7532119Zab 2010 2009044005

[Fic]—dc22 CIP

AC

10 11 12 13 14 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION