The Zombie Game

She made her fingers twitch like she couldn’t control them anymore. She let herself hang off the gate of the old red truck and she pawed her hands over the scared plastic lining of the bed, towards her two brothers playing in the cab. She let her jaw hang slack and her eyes unfocus and tried to get at her brothers using only her arms. Her fingers and palms slipped and she didn’t get anywhere. This made her laugh.

Her brothers turned around to see what she was laughing about. She hung off the truck like she had no legs and opened and closed her mouth at them like a particularly stupid fish.

“Lonnie!” said Richard, like he didn’t like it, but Dal cried “Zombie!” and soon they had both squeezed out the back window to fight her. She remembered to twitch her fingers and she rolled her head around. For a second even Dallas looked afraid, so she bugger her unfocused eyes and made a chattery gobbleing noise that made them all laugh.

“Quick! Decapitate it!” said Richard. Lonnie squirmed slowly towards them. There was a second of play panic as the boy searched around for weapons.

“Not the bungy cord!” cried Lonnie. The metal hook on the end could hurt.

“That wouldn’t kill a zombie anyway,” said Dal reasonably. Richard picked up a broken old piece of wood left over from the old pallet instead. Dallas found the broken bicycle pump. Lonnie reached for Dal’s ankle and the two boys started to play hack at her. The blows made hollow noises against her coat. Once Dallas got her fingers but she couldn’t feel the swat through her gloves.

Finally Richard put his wood against her neck and said “Hack! Hack!” They were never allowed to hit each other in the head or neck. Lonnie rolled over and snapped her jaws twice, then fell still.

Richard and Dallas giggled and jumped up and down in triumph. Lonnie kept silent. The new game still wasn’t over.

“We did it!” cried Richard.

“Now all we hafta do is burn it,” said Dal.

“With wood?” asked Richard, looking doubtfully at the piece in his hand.

“I guess so,” said Lonnie as she got up.

“Hey!” protested Dal.

“I wanna play too,” said Lonnie. “This is important stuff. Besides, dead zombies come in little bits. I’m all whole. Look for the bark that fell off the firewood!”

Lonnie and her brothers dropped off the sides of the truck and started ferreting around the old wood pile beside them. Sometimes the bark fell off the wood before it got stacked. Getting enough to burn an entire zombie would be hard.

Richard started a pile on the other side of the truck. It made wet slapping sounds against the ground as he dropped it. Lonnie fell to her knees and swatted the dusting of snow off the ground so she could see. A big piece of bark had slid under the truck. She crawled under, tucking her stack under one arm and reaching out with the other one.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw it nestled in the dry leaves near the front left tire: the outline of a human nose and forehead. She turned away before she could see if it had been a man or a lady. She kicked out from under the truck and threw down her wood.

“Mom!” she yelled. “Mom, there’s still bits of one under the truck!”