I mean, I went out with my dad once to a farm, where we bought a sheep for mutton, and we saw the farmer kill the sheep. He stuck his knife into the sheep’s throat, and we watched him kill it, and it was uncomfortable, because you could see that something was dying so you could eat it… but killing a sheep up close and personal wasn’t like this. The sheep bled and got chopped up, and Dad and I ate it, sure, but this Milrow factory was something else. Cow after cow coming into the plant and getting ripped to pieces. High-speed chopping ripping tearing shrink-wrapping. I wondered what kind of people could create a factory like this, all for tearing animals apart as fast as possible. It scared me.
“They’re turning all the zombie cows into food for people,” I said. “I can’t believe it. They’re insane.”
It was all zombie cows. Not a single real cow in the whole bunch.
“So this is what ground zero for the zombie apocalypse looks like.” Joe snapped more pics. “I sort of thought it would be a military science lab somewhere.”
“We’ve got to stop this,” I said. “We can’t let them do this.”
“There’s a STOP button on the line,” Joe said.
Miguel whacked him upside the head. “Not just now, idiot. We got to report it. Make sure all this gets stopped.”
“We need something they can’t sweep under the table,” I said. “Something cops can’t ignore.”
“Real zombie proof,” Joe murmured.
“Something that you just couldn’t make up,” Miguel said.
“MOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo!” moaned the cow heads, lying in a giant pile at the beginning of the meatpacking line. “MOOOOooooooooooooooooo!”
We all looked at each other.
A mooing zombie cow head?
Yeah. That would probably do the trick.
CHAPTER 31
“Once we grab one, we’ve got to be ready to run,” Joe said. “They’ll be all over us.”
“What do you think, Rabi?” Miguel asked. “You got some kind of superstrategy for this?”
I looked over the line, trying to figure out the best way. “If we grab the head, they’re going to see us and we’ll never outrun them on our bikes.” A new idea hit me. “You still got the keys to your uncle’s truck?”
Miguel looked puzzled, then felt his pockets, “I don’t…” His eyes widened. “Yeah. Right here.”
“You think you can drive us out of here?” I asked. “Without crashing?”
Miguel thought about it. “Sure. As long as I don’t have to reverse.”
“Are we leaving our bikes?” Joe asked.
“Forget the bikes,” I said. “We’re trading up.”
“This is nuts,” Joe said. “Miguel could get busted driving illegally.”
Miguel laughed. “You’re going to worry about me driving without a license? I’m not even licensed to walk in America. Everything I do here is illegal. I’ll totally drive us out of here.”
“As long as we get ourselves a zombie cow head, nothing else will matter,” I said. “If the cops see one of those monsters, they’re going to forget all about who’s driving what or where someone was born.”
“Just be careful not to get bit,” Miguel said.
“We got gloves or something?”
“Worker gloves. Sure.” Miguel stealthed off as I continued to look over the line.
When Miguel came back with gloves, I said, “Here’s what we do. Miguel goes and gets the truck running. Joe, you’re getting the head.”
“Sweeeeeet.” Joe paused, then asked, “So, what are you doing?”
I sighed. “I’m the bait. Just like always.”
“Will you at least grab my bat?” Joe asked Miguel.
“Don’t worry. I’ll dump everything in the truck,” Miguel said.
We all got set. I gave Miguel a four hundred count to get out to the truck and get it loaded.
“You set?” I asked Joe.
Joe grinned. “Me? I’m born ready. You think Miguel is?”
I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to hang out in the factory any longer. The longer we waited, the bigger the chance that we’d get caught. “He’d better be,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Joe started sneaking around the side of the line, ducking and keeping to the shadows, pausing behind machinery, sliding under conveyors. Waiting until workers’ backs were turned before bolting from one hiding place to the next. He was good at it.
More cows were dragged in, hooked up, and gutted. The pile of mooing cow heads grew. More meat whipped past me in little plastic packages.
Where was it all going?
I spared a quick glance at Joe and his sneaky progress around the production lines. He was tucked into deep shadow between a couple of big metal grinders. You could barely make him out.
More burger shot past me on conveyors, with no sign of where it was all going. Were they going to bury it? Were they storing it?
I squeezed out of my hiding place and snuck down the line, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t messing up the plan. Anyway, I just needed to create a distraction. The farther away I was from Joe when I raised a holler, the better.
The line workers didn’t notice a thing. It was lucky that they were all covered head to toe in protective gear, and the line was going so fast. No wonder Miguel’s family had always been tired when they came home from working at Milrow: the whole plant was running on fast-forward, like some kind of superfast video game that never gave you a chance to breathe before the next cow came whipping down the line. The workers had to chop it up before the next one came crashing down on them. They had to stay totally focused and didn’t have time to do anything at all except work work work.
At least it made it easy for me to sneak behind them and run down the line to where the meat was disappearing into the storage areas.
I peered into the freezer room and sucked in my breath.
When I’d seen the labels, I should have known. A half-dozen big refrigerated trucks were backed up to the loading docks, and workers were shoveling meat into the trucks as fast as it came off the production line. As each truck filled, another took its place.
I remembered Miguel’s uncle telling us that meat from Milrow was delivered to seven states.
This was the beginning of the real honest-to-God zombie apocalypse. Truck after truck carrying zombified meat to supermarkets and fast-food restaurants all across America’s heartland. Ground zero for the end of the world, just like Joe had been saying.
If Americans eat x pounds of beef each week, and it takes m cows to make enough, and if Milrow feeds seven states with a population of p…
It added up to a lot of zombies.
Where were all the inspectors? Why wasn’t anyone catching this? How could Milrow get away with it?
A shout echoed from the meatpacking room. All of a sudden the line stopped running. More people started shouting, and then I could hear Joe hooting and hollering. All the loading workers ran toward the commotion.
I caught a glimpse of Joe dashing down a conveyor belt, laughing like a maniac. He held a snapping cow head high, and it let out a crazed “MOOOOOoooo!” as Joe dodged the clumsy grabs of suited-up workers.
I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t even waited for my signal. He’d just gone for it. Typical Joe. And now he was going to get snagged, unless—
“I got one, too!” I shouted at them. “Look at me! I got one, too, and you didn’t even see it!” They all turned and stared at me. I saw Joe duck through beginning of the line, through the hole where the cows had all been coming in, and then he was gone.
Some workers were scrambling after Joe, but others started for me. I bolted back into the shipping room.
Right in front of me, one of the trucks was idling.
I realized what I had to do.
It wouldn’t do any good to have zombie proof if we didn’t know where they were taking all this meat. I dove into the truck and buried myself under cold blocks of meat.
I heard men shouting, ?
??Where’d he go? Where is he? You see him, Pete?”
And then someone else said, “Get everything cleaned up and get these trucks out of here! I don’t want anything for an inspector to see if those kids call USDA!”
One of the workers laughed at that. “When does USDA ever see anything? I’ve got a blind aunt who sees better than USDA.” And then the doors rattled closed and darkness swallowed me.
It was cold.
Really cold.
All I had on were thin Milrow janitor clothes.
The truck started to drive and I got colder and colder. My teeth started to chatter. I tried to get up and keep moving, but I couldn’t stand straight because the truck kept speeding up and slowing down and turning corners. I squatted down in a corner, trying to stay away from the freezing walls, wrapping my arms around myself in the darkness.
It was insanely cold. Too cold. I realized I was going to die. Someone was going find me here, huddled up—a frozen Rabi Popsicle surrounded by piles of zombie meat.
What a stupid way to die.
I hadn’t stopped the zombie apocalypse, and I hadn’t saved anyone. Nothing I’d done had mattered.
I might have felt bad about that, but I was getting too cold to feel much about anything one way or the other.
By the time the zombies got done with America, I was going to be long gone.
It got colder and colder.
And colder.
colder
co—
…
CHAPTER 32
The door to the meat truck rolled up.
The light was so bright I couldn’t see.
“Get him out of there!”
Who was that?
Shadows grabbed me and dragged me out of the truck. Humid air blasted over me. Warm air. Someone was holding me up, but when they let me go, I just fell over. I hit the pavement with a thud.
A blanket dropped on me. “Get under it.”
Miguel?
“Get under it?”
That was Joe.
“He’s frozen. He doesn’t have any heat inside him anymore. We got to warm him up.”
“His skin is like ice.”
Popsicle, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make my jaw work. Rabi Popsicle. They climbed under the blanket with me and hugged me.
“Next time you decide to be a hero, maybe you should think a little before you do it,” Miguel said.
“Yeah, man,” Joe said. “Leave the crazy stuff to me.”
They were chafing my arms and legs. My limbs were tingling, getting their feeling back. I started to shiver.
“He’s getting worse!” Joe said.
“No,” Miguel said. “He’s getting better. His body’s remembering that it’s cold. Now it’s trying to warm up. Shivering is how he warms up.”
I sat up and pushed them off. Miguel looked me over. “You okay?”
“Y-ye-yeah,” I said. “I’m ff-f-f-f—fine.”
“He’s alive, ladies and gentlemen,” Joe said. “The first ever Neanderthal to be pulled out of a glacier.”
My head hurt. I was still freezing. I tried to get up and stumbled and sat down again. I couldn’t stop shivering. Miguel grabbed me and said, “Slow down, boy hero.”
“Q-q-quit calling me th-that.”
“Then quit doing stupid stuff. If you’re gonna be some kind of big strategy guy, then you got to think at least more than one step ahead. What the heck were you thinking?”
“I d-d-didn’t w-want to let the t-t-truck get away. D-d-d-didn’t want to lose the mmmm-m-meat.” I looked around. “W-where are we? H-h-how’d you find me? I thought I was a g-goner.”
Joe grinned. “Thank Miguel. He saw you jump in.”
“Dumbest thing I ever saw,” Miguel said. “You know how many trucks they put out on the road? We almost lost you twice, trying to follow yours in the dark. If Joe didn’t get the license plate, you’d have been dead for sure. Most of them turned one way, but Joe noticed yours wasn’t there anymore, so we tracked back and found it.”
“Wh-where are we?”
“The Hy-Vee.”
“The supermarket? Here in Delbe?”
“We think they’re going to put the meat into the store.”
Another shiver overtook me. “They c-c-can’t!”
“Yeah. We’re trying to figure out what to do.”
“Where’s the driver?”
Joe looked embarrassed. “I used the cow on him.”
“You did what?”
“He noticed we were following him and he got out and came after us. He looked really mad, and then he tried to grab us. So I threw the cow at him.”
“And it bit him?”
“Yeah. Now he’s over in those weeds. We tied him up.”
“You can’t just go making zombies!”
“He had a tire iron! He was going to hit us!”
I shook my head. “I can’t leave you guys for a s-s-second.”
“Save it, Popsicle boy,” Miguel said. “Without us, you’d be dead by now.”
“Making more zombies doesn’t stop the zombie apocalypse,” I said.
“Getting our heads bashed in by some grown-up doesn’t stop it, either,” Miguel said. “Joe might be crazy, but that guy was going to kill us.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thanks for saving me.” I paused. “So, what are we going to do about the meat?”
“We can burn it,” Joe suggested.
“Like with a bonfire?”
Joe grinned. “Well… kind of.”
CHAPTER 33
The truck blew up.
I expected it to be more spectacular, but it turned out that if we soaked our shirts in gas from the can Miguel used for his mower, and then lit them with the lighter, they went up pretty good.
The fire ran from shirt to shirt, igniting each one in the line. Whump whump whump! Fast. And then flaming right up a knotted shirt and into the gas tank of the truck. We ducked behind the Hy-Vee.
Bam! Up went the truck. No more meat.
We came out and watched it burn. Orange and yellow flames roiled. Oily smoke billowed up into the night sky, blotting out stars and moon. The heat made my face and body warm. I’d never blown up a truck before.
“It’s not as good as in the movies,” Joe groused. “Comic books and movies get it all wrong.”
“As long as it’s getting rid of the meat,” I said, “it’s fine. Now let’s get out of here.”
“But it was supposed to be really big!” Joe complained. “I wanted, like, a mushroom cloud or something.”
“It’s doing the job,” Miguel said. “Now get in. We’re going to be in serious trouble if anyone catches us here.” He opened the door of his uncle’s pickup truck.
“There’s no one around here this late,” Joe said, still watching the meat truck burn.
“Where’s the cow?” I asked.
A mooing came from the back of the pickup, answering the question. I walked over and looked into the truck bed. There it was, baring its teeth, like it wanted to bounce up and start chewing on me.
“I was trying to come up with names for it,” Joe said.
“You what?”
“At first, I was thinking Bessie, but I think it’s a boy.”
“A steer,” Miguel corrected.
“Whatever. Its name is Bart.”
“Bart?”
“Bart the Zombie Cow.” Joe reached out to pat it on the top of its head. It snapped and he jerked his hand back.
“Don’t touch it!” Miguel and I both shouted.
Joe looked at us like we were babies. “I’m not afraid of it. I’m the one who grabbed it in the first place. Sheesh. It’s not like he’s got legs or something. Not like he can jump.” He climbed into the truck and looked ahead. “So, are we going, or what?”
Bart the Zombie Cow. Miguel and I stared at it. Or him. Or Bart. Or whatever.
The head glared at us and bared its teeth again. “Moooooooooo.”
If there was any better proof that something wasn’t right at Milrow Meat Solutions, I couldn’t think of it. If the cops didn’t believe this, they wouldn’t believe anything.
“You ready to finish this?” Miguel asked.
“More than ready.”
We climbed in and Miguel peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the burning Milrow meat truck flickering in our rearview mirror.
We headed down Grand Avenue toward the police station. The five lights on the main drag were all green, and we rolled right through, like the universe was telling us that all was good, and we were on the road to salvation.
We pulled into the police station and parked.
“Well, here we are,” Miguel said.
“It’s awful dark,” Joe said.
He was right. I squinted at the place. There weren’t any lights on at all. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Must be after midnight.”
“Do they close?”
“Beats me. I never tried to visit a police station in the middle of the night.”
We got out and went over to the doors. Joe rattled them, but they were locked. A moaning broke the silence. We all knew instantly what that meant.
“Get the bats!”
We dashed back to the truck and grabbed our sluggers. The moaning came again.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, ready for a zombie to come bursting out of the bushes. Slowly, a shadow rose. We spread out, raising our bats.
“Whoa!” the shadow called. “Go easy!”
“Otis?” I asked. “Is that you?”
Sure enough, it was Otis Andrews, stepping out of the shadows, holding a baseball bat of his own.
“Get him!” Joe shouted, but Miguel grabbed Joe by the shirt and yanked him back.
“He isn’t a zombie, dumbwad.”
“We don’t know that,” Joe said.
“You zombied?” I asked Otis.
“Nah, man.” He shrugged. “But only because you warned me.”
Another moaning came from the shadows.
“So what’s that sound?”
“Bart,” Otis said.
“Bart’s in the truck,” Joe said.