Max Brallier - Last Kids on Earth and the Midnight Blade

“Don’t you dare bad-mouth the smell,” Quint says. “I spent weeks perfecting it!”

“Stop yappin’!” Dirk barks. “We’re zombies. Zombies don’t yap!”

OK, so . . . I lied. We’re just pretending to be zombies. We’re undercover. secret MISSION OPERATION: DEFEAT EVIE AND GHAZT!

We are currently staggering, zombie-style, towards the Wakefield Bowl-O-Drome, which is Evie and Ghazt’s villainous lair.

How do we know it’s their villainous lair?

Because there are a bunch of old TVs mounted above the Bowl-O-Drome’s entrance, and Evie’s up there talking:

I lean over and whisper to my buddies, “Look at Evie, beckoning zombies from far and wide. She really embraced her bad side. Like full supervillain.”

“It appears the zombies are drawn by her voice,” Quint says.

June nods. “Yep, ’cause humans = food!”

See, we’ve been staking out the Bowl-O-Drome for a week, waiting for a big enough zombie horde to come along so we could slip in with them, unnoticed.

And finally they have . . .

So we got into character and joined the walking zombie club, but not before we did a final operation checklist – Zombie makeup: Check. Grey skin, green ooze draining from our mouths, just-woke-up hair.

Zombie odour: Check. We got THE STENCH. Quint bottled it. It’s awful and foul and I’ve got puke like three-quarters of the way up my throat – but it works.

And last but MOST IMPORTANT: the zombie walk, AKA the zombie shuffle, AKA the zombie shuffle, AKA the zombie zigzag. We knew our zombie walks had to be perfect if we wanted to blend in. We spent days practising – even doing it for Bardle to make sure we had it down pat.

It all better work, because we’re nearing the bowling alley entrance. There are zombies on either side of us, pressing against us . . .

I hope Evie’s ready, ’cause we’re coming – and we’re bringing payback! She stole my blade! Got my friend zombified! Did – just – a lot of stuff !

And in mere moments we’re gonna hit her with that payback. All four of us, together, like the freaking Avengers . . .

Heavy breathing – like panting – pulls me out of my superhero squad fantasy. I expect to see a zombie with a nasty cold, but it’s actually Dirk. And he does not look ready to get his Avenger on.

Which is fair. He went through some pretty serious stuff. I mean, he’s healed. But still – upstairs – he’s probably a little freaked out.

“Dirk, you OK?” I whisper.

Before he can answer, I feel a hand on mine. I look down. “June, you’re holding my hand!” I whisper excitedly.

“Not holding,” she says. “ Squeezing .”

“A love squeeze?”

“NO! A hurt squeeze,” she growls through gritted teeth. “No more talking!”

June squeezes twice – extra-painful hard – and I look up as the bowling alley doors swing open.

I do my best zombie moan as we are all, together, funneled inside the villainous home base . . .

chapter two

As soon as we’re through the door, we start searching for cover. Quint silently points to a row of shelves filled with bowling shoes. Getting there is a claustrophobic nightmare – kinda feels like Best Buy on Black Friday. We’re forcefully pushing ourselves through the zombie horde, trying to reach our safe place.

But we’re lucky – the zombies leave us alone. The horde is morphing from a huge mushed-up mash to one organized line.

They are drawn by something we don’t see or hear – and they’re shuffling away from the entrance and towards the old arcade and snack bar room. When the last zombie has turned the corner, I realize that this whole place is emptier than I expected – by a lot . And most important – no sign of Evie or Ghazt.

Ghazt was scared of the Slicer last time, so all I gotta do is show it to him again – and he’ll vamoose! But first we gotta find him.

“Guys, it’s quiet,” I say. “ Too quiet. ”

Dirk shoots me a confused look. I see sweat pouring off his face in fat droplets.

Dirk frowns, getting sweatier, then quickly says, “Oh OK me neither just wanted to make sure.”

“Guys!” Quint says in a whisper. He’s using an old selfie stick with a mirror to peek around the corner. “The zombies all went into the arcade. But there are ZOMBIE GUARDSat the doors!”

I scooch over and glance in the mirror. I see four zombies, standing watch, wearing hooded robes . . .

Those robes – I realize they’re just like the ones we saw in Evie’s book. She’s drafting these zombies into her Cabal of the Cosmic!

OLD-TiMey MeMBeRs OF THe CABAL OF THe CosMic! WAY BACk iN THe DAY.

The Cabal of the Cosmic was a group of crazy- pants people from the olden days who were obsessed with bad dudes like Ŗeżżőcħ the Ancient, Destructor of Worlds. Evie found their old book, full of information and instructions. (It’s OK, though – we stole the book from her and now we have our own guide to Ŗeżżőcħ ’s world of cosmic horror.)

“Guys,” I whisper, nodding towards the arcade snackbar, “I think that’s Ghazt’s real home base.”

“A villainous lair inside a villainous lair?” June asks. “How many villainous lairs does one interdimensional rat monster need?”

Quint responds, “The answer, it seems, is two.”

“If we’re gonna sneak in and crash their evil party,” I say, “we need to blend in like undercover super spies.”

I lock eyes with June – and she gets it, right away. We gotta take out these guards, triple-ninja- style, and steal their uniforms.

June nudges Quint. He pulls a wiffle ball box from his action-geek bag. But inside is no ordinary wiffle ball. Inside is the –

“I’ll roll,” Quint says.

“And I’ll take ’em out,” June adds.

With that, it’s meatball away. Quint bowls it towards the arcade. It rolls past the blue-cloaked zombie guards . . .

They look around, sniffing, then a moment later –

The guards stagger after the ball, hunched over, bony fingers grabbing and scraping. One finally collapses on to the ball, like it’s trying to recover a fumble in the end zone. All four of them begin gnawing at the thing – sucking on the wiffle meatball.