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The zombie had reached the ground floor, and was now making a beeline for the front door. And she would have made it if not for one of Odelia’s cats’ toys tripping her up and sending her flying. She landed on her belly with a thud, and stayed down. Within seconds, Chase was upon her, but instead of incapacitating her, as per police academy training and department regulations, instead he opted to keep a safe distance.

“Um… so how do we handle this?” he asked, clearly reluctant to put this hands on the zombie woman.

“I’d say we call an ambulance,” said Libby. “This is obviously a very sick person.”

“But if she’s dead already,” said Jonah, “doesn’t that kinda defeat the purpose? I mean, she probably needs an undertaker, not a doctor, right?”

“I’ll ask my dad,” said Odelia, and raced out of the kitchen door and into her parents’ backyard. Moments later she was storming into their bedroom, and rousing her folks.

“Dad,” she said. “You have to come with me. We caught one of the zombies, and now we don’t know what to do.”

To his credit, Tex was out from under the sheets and putting on his slippers in seconds, and then he was following her down the stairs.“You caught a zombie? How?”

“She was in my bathroom,” said Odelia.

“In your bathroom?”

“Yeah. No idea how she got there, but now she’s downstairs, passed out on the floor, and we thought you’d better take a look, just in case she’s contagious or something.”

They walked back into her house and to Odelia’s relief the woman was still there, lying on the floor.

“She must have hit her head,” she explained when her dad knelt down next to her.

She glanced down at the toy the woman had tripped over. It was a mechanical mouse.

“This woman needs a hospital,” said Dad finally. “She’s in a very bad way.”

Immediately Chase took out his phone and called an ambulance.

“So… is she dead?” asked Jonah.

“No, she’s not,” said Dad. “She’s alive, though I don’t know for how much longer.”

“So she’s not a zombie?” asked Jonah, sounding disappointed. He was filming the whole thing.

“A zombie? No, of course not,” said Dad. “She’s a sick woman, and until I run some more tests I honestly have no idea what made her this way.”

They all stared down at the poor woman, and Odelia felt relieved at her dad’s words. “Not a zombie,” she said, and Chase nodded curtly, as if to say, ‘See? What did I tell you?’

“Man, what a bummer,” said Jonah.

Chapter 19

Dooley and I had followed the capture of the so-called zombie with rapt attention, and I had to admit I was as relieved as Odelia when the woman turned out not to be a zombie but an actual person. As I mentioned before, my knowledge of zombies is sketchy, but this seemed like a much better deal for all: no one’s brains would get eaten, or smashed in, and now Uncle Alec was off the hook, too.

The ambulance arrived in due course, and even though the two paramedics frowned when confronted with their patient, they still acted like the professionals they were and put her on a stretcher and took her along to the nearest hospital.

Tex decided to ride in the ambulance with them, as his professional curiosity had been piqued, and since he wanted to know how the woman had ended up in his daughter’s bathroom of all places.

And so when Harriet and Brutus finally wandered in, we had two wonderful bits of news to impart: the fact that we were going to have our first taste of Miracle Cure kibble very soon now, and that the zombies weren’t zombies at all!

Brutus looked as disappointed as Jonah at the last part, but he soon recovered.

And when suddenly Gran walked in and demanded heatedly,“Where is my television crew? Have you been hogging my television crew again?” it was time for Odelia to put us in her car and we took off to the Peppard Pet Food Company.

“If the zombies aren’t zombies, then what are they?” asked Dooley.

“I don’t know, Dooley,” Odelia admitted. “But I’m sure Dad will find out and tell us.”

“I think Tex is wrong,” said Brutus. “I think these are zombies, and soon they’re going to wipe out the entire hospital, and then the entire town, and soon the whole world will become the setting for an army of walking dead.”

“She’s just a very sick woman,” said Odelia. “And now she’ll get the help she needs.”

“Or she’ll infect the doctors, the nurses, and everyone else in that hospital,” said Brutus, who seemed to relish in his role as the herald of doom.

“Oh, nonsense,” said Odelia. “She’ll be fine.”

“If she even makes it to the hospital,” said Brutus. “She probably woke up during the drive, and first attacked Tex and then those two nurses before engineering her escape.”

Odelia, even though logically she was inclined to refute this horror story, still picked out her phone and plugged it into her car’s mobile phone connector, then called her dad.

“Dad? Oh, thank God. Is everything all right?”