A Small Zombie Problem Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by K. G. Campbell

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Campbell, K. G. (Keith Gordon), author.

  Title: A small zombie problem / K.G. Campbell.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. | Summary: When August DuPont, eleven, leaves his eccentric Aunt Hydrangea’s crumbling mansion for the first time ever, he meets family, makes a friend, and attracts a zombie.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018026943 (print) | LCCN 2018034695 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-53957-8 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-553-53955-4 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-553-53956-1 (glb)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Recluses—Fiction. | Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. | Loneliness—Fiction. | Zombies—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C33 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.C33 Sm 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780553539578

  The illustrations were created using watercolor and colored pencil.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  To Debbie and Rick, who inspired the whole thing

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter 1: A Bloodcurdling Scream

  Chapter 2: Upon a Fainting Couch

  Chapter 3: The Wild Child

  Chapter 4: Stella Starz (in Her Own Life)

  Chapter 5: The Secret Mission

  Chapter 6: The Far Above

  Chapter 7: The Ghost of Locust Hole

  Chapter 8: The Balloon and the Skeleton

  Chapter 9: The Rabbit-Toothed Visitor

  Chapter 10: An Invitation Is Extended

  Chapter 11: An Invitation Is Accepted

  Chapter 12: Boy Meets World

  Chapter 13: The Tombs of Hurricane County

  Chapter 14: Château Malveau

  Chapter 15: A Matching Pair of Relations

  Chapter 16: The House of Eternal Mourning

  Chapter 17: The Temptation

  Chapter 18: Boom!

  Part II

  Chapter 19: The Risen Dead

  Chapter 20: The Dupont Treasure

  Chapter 21: A Clammy Obstacle

  Chapter 22: Goodnight’s Funeral Parlor

  Chapter 23: A Small and Icy Hand

  Chapter 24: Madame Marvell

  Chapter 25: The Zombie Stone

  Chapter 26: The Necromancer’s Sister

  Chapter 27: The Tattooed Gemologist

  Chapter 28: An Overdue Makeover

  Chapter 29: The Belonging

  Chapter 30: The Betrayal

  Chapter 31: A Catastrophic Misunderstanding

  Chapter 32: The Evil Twin

  Chapter 33: Alone…Again

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Thunder rumbled and lightning flickered across the troupe of skeletons: a gruesome, silent circus of grim clowns and tumbling, hollow-eyed acrobats. Skulls gleamed. Skinless faces grinned madly. Bony fingers extended toward the lone, living boy before them.

  The boy who had made them.

  These weren’t real skeletons, you understand, but models the boy had built. Their ribs and femurs had been crafted from coat-hanger wire, their skulls from clay molded over Ping-Pong balls. The spindly frames were painstakingly wrapped in strips of paper dripping with a paste of flour and water. When dry and hardened, the papier-mâché had been sanded to a finish smooth as ivory.

  The figures stood about sixteen inches tall and wore festive costumes cobbled together from old bandannas, misplaced buttons, and other odds and ends. The ringmaster sported a top hat made from a wine cork and held a chopstick baton. The trapeze artist’s swing had once hung in a parakeet’s cage. The strongman boasted an impressive mustache of steel wool and boots fashioned from black duct tape.

  The boy was engrossed in creating the latest addition to this bizarre, theatrical group. Hunched over a rickety desk, working in the murky light of a stormy afternoon, he was oblivious even to the sound of a sudden shower pattering on the roof above his head.

  Beneath his fingers, the model was nearing completion. Its costume was cut from the satin lining of an old waistcoat and studded with tarnished sequins. The hat was a solid silver thimble. The face was painted with particular care. He was outstanding—so splendid, in fact, that the boy had already given the clown a name.

  “Nearly there, Kevin,” the boy advised. “You just need a nose.”

  Now, you’re probably thinking that Kevin is a rather everyday sort of name for a clown. Clowns, after all, generally come with whimsical names like Tickles or fancy foreign ones like Punchinello. But to be fair, the boy had little experience in thinking up names for things, and Kevin was one of the few he had come across.

  He carefully positioned a red plastic pushpin over Kevin’s face when suddenly the desk lurched beneath the boy’s elbow, jarring the pin from his tweezers and sending it tippy-tapping across the floorboards.

  “Aw, shoot!” cried the boy, scrambling after the tiny thing. “It’s the last one; where’d it go?” A scarlet speck nestling in a crevice of the rough floorboards caught his eye. “Relax, everyone, I found it!” he reassured his bony audience.

  While he was on his knees, the boy added another thin book to the stack supporting one of the desk’s broken legs. He pressed firmly on the desk’s drop-down front to test its stability.

  “All right. Here we go.” The boy made a second attempt to center the pin-nose. His breathing slowed. His eyes narrowed. He gripped the tweezers firmly but gently. This was the finishing touch; it had to be perfect!

  But Kevin the oddly named clown was not destined to receive his nose that day.

  For suddenly, without warning, the wet afternoon was pierced by the sounds of smashing, crashing, and a loud and terrible, bloodcurdling scream.

  * * *

  * * *

  “August!” shrieked a woman from the lower floor. “AUGUST!”

  Tweezers, pushpin, and stool flew in all directions as August (for such was the boy’s name) jumped up. His boots pounded on the stairs as they raced toward the kitchen, from where the screams were coming.

  There, a dramatic scene confronted him. You’d be forgiven for concluding that a brutal crime had just occurred, for the room was strewn with overturned crates and broken bottles. The linoleum, range, and icebox were spattered and dripping with bloody red fluid.r />
  But the powerful, vinegary aroma and sting to August’s eyes revealed the substance to be nothing more sinister than…hot sauce.

  Skittering and spinning about in the crimson pools on the floor, the skirts of her ballgown swirling around her, a woman was swatting frantically at a small yellow butterfly. It bobbed above her crooked pink tiara while she continued to screech at the top of her lungs, as if under attack by a pterodactyl.

  “August,” the woman cried with desperation, “help me!”

  But August was saved the trouble of rescuing the lady. He had scarcely passed through the doorway when the butterfly abruptly abandoned its assault and casually flitted across the pungent wreckage to alight purposely on the boy’s head.

  The woman, finally silenced, observed this unusual development with blanched face and gaping mouth.

  “Aunt Hydrangea?” said August with concern.

  But there was no response. The lady’s eyes rolled upward into her head, and she promptly keeled backward, stiff as a board, in a dead faint.

  When August entered the parlor a few minutes later, the thunder was a distant murmur, and the rain reduced to a steady drip.

  “How about,” he suggested quietly, “some fortified tea?”

  He placed a laden tray on an upturned fruit crate. It served as a table beside a threadbare fainting couch, where his aunt had been settled to recover.

  Hydrangea was not young, but nor was she exactly old. A pink tiara perched atop her untidy nest of vaguely colored hair, and a sash diagonally crossed her torso, embroidered with golden thread forming the words “Miss Chili Pepper Princess.” The battered headdress was missing many a rhinestone, and the sash was faded and frayed from decades of daily wear.

  The lady was perched tensely, her dark watery eyes bulging, her twitching lips forming unspoken words. A flimsy lace handkerchief was getting a good twisting between white-knuckled fists, which rested in the cloud of her voluminous skirts.

  “Is it gone?” inquired Hydrangea, fixing August with a terrified stare. “That…thing?”

  “The butterfly exited the way it likely entered,” August reassured her. “Through a broken windowpane. I’m sure it was just trying to escape the rain.”

  “A broken windowpane?” Her voice was shrill. “Oh, August, have you secured the breach? You have? I swear, I would not survive another assault. I feel fragile as a glass basket. Please, sugar, check that this room is secured; we might be moments from another invasion.”

  August sighed, nodded, and crossed the parlor, deftly avoiding a large black hole in the floor, where rotted timbers had collapsed into the damp basement below.

  It was by no means a modest parlor, high-ceilinged and spacious, with tall windows framed in richly carved rosewood. But the place had clearly seen more prosperous times. There were no dainty chairs with skinny legs. No plush Turkish rugs. The peeling walls were checkered not by fine paintings, but by squares of less faded paper where fine paintings had once hung. The marble mantel was broken and bore no fragile vases or silver candlesticks, but only a handful of mildewed family photographs and a porcelain clock whose little goatherd had lost his head.

  “The barricades seem secure,” August reported, inspecting the boards nailed across the tall windows. “No holes!”

  “Then come,” said Hydrangea, relieved, her posture relaxing a little. She patted the seat beside her. “Join me.” As the fainting couch provided the only seating in the room, August had little choice.

  He leaned over the fruit crate to prepare the beverage. Into a chipped cup he poured steaming tea, then added plop! plop! two lumps of sugar and, straight from the bottle, a shot of bourbon. He stirred in the finishing touch: a liberal dash of hot sauce. Fortified tea.

  Hydrangea sipped. The cup chattered in the saucer, gripped by shaking hands. But the lady’s eyelids drooped. She heaved a heavy sigh and grew tranquil.

  “DuPont’s Peppy Pepper Sauce,” she reflected several moments later, “really was the finest hot sauce, August. Have I ever told you of the many awards it won? The accolades? The praise?”

  “Many times, ma’am,” said August.

  Hydrangea nodded toward the hot sauce bottle, and August, familiar with the gesture, obediently coaxed a drop of the brilliant liquid onto his open palm and brought it to his tongue.

  “Can you taste the oak barrels?” asked Hydrangea eagerly. “The aged vinegars, the spicy dance of three peppers, and the sweet surprise of hibiscus honey?”

  August really could. He nodded.

  “Like a dragon’s kiss,” he said, smiling, quoting the company slogan, knowing that it pleased his aunt.

  “Fiery yet sweet,” agreed Hydrangea. “Complex yet simple. The perfect hot sauce. No need to rely on sensational names”—she paused, a bitter expression darkening her face—“or novelty bottles, like certain…other…brands.”

  “You know,” she mused, “there was a time when DuPont’s Peppy Pepper Sauce could be found in every fine dining room and restaurant from Croissant City to Paris, France. It was without compare.”

  Her eyes glistened, and August knew from experience that his aunt was revisiting happier days gone by.

  “When I was a girl,” she said to no one beyond August’s shoulder, “the DuPonts were still a family of consequence, on every invitation list. This house, oh, August, you should have witnessed the glittering parties hosted here at Locust Hole. Champagne. Music. Laughter.”

  The twinkle faded in Hydrangea’s eyes as she drifted back to the present.

  “Observe us now,” she said, gazing around the room. “The pitiful remains of a distinguished dynasty: a crazy old spinster, a strangely afflicted boy, and a crumbling ruin. We are, I fear, the last of the DuPonts.”

  She placed her palm upon August’s cheek.

  “Just you and me. We have no other kinfolk in the world, August. But at least we have each other.”

  The hand dropped to her lap. Hydrangea lowered her eyes.

  “How will we survive, sugar,” she said, voice ragged, “after the last of DuPont’s Peppy Pepper Sauce has been sold? Why, only a few dozen crates remain. And as you know”—she shot the boy a sad, resigned smile—“there is no more in production.” A frown creased her forehead. “Curse that fluttering devil! So much wasted sauce; every lost drop is a penny down the drain. Oh, August, I’m so sorry. It lunged at me from nowhere, and naturally I panicked and upset the crates.”

  “Naturally,” repeated August, although he felt pretty certain that a crippling horror of butterflies was anything but natural. But he assured her, nonetheless, that she was being fretful and should not worry about their circumstances and that everything would be fine.

  But he wasn’t sure that it would.

  “Remind me again,” he suggested, attempting to check his aunt’s rising agitation, “how you won the county Chili Pepper Princess pageant.”

  At this proposal, Hydrangea visibly brightened. She set down her tea and, smoothing her sash, opened her mouth with an eager expression. But before she could speak, the broken porcelain clock announced the hour with a strangled, rusty chime.

  “What?” cried August sharply. “It’s four o’clock already?” He leaped to his feet, rattling the tea tray and startling his wide-eyed aunt. “I’ll help you clean up later,” he blurted. “I have…um…an appointment!”

  “With whom,” declared Hydrangea, astounded, “could you possibly have an appointment?”

  But the boy was gone.

  The door of August’s room slammed behind him as he charged toward his splintered desk. Hastily he yanked open and rummaged through the drawers. Not there. He scanned the Formica-topped table, where the skeleton circus stood assembled. Not there either. He pushed aside the stuff from which the grinning performers were built: coat hangers, vintage newspapers, a large jar of Ping-Pong balls. Nope, nothing.<
br />
  “Shoot!” cried August in frustration. “Now, where did I leave it?”

  He cast about frantically, extending his search across the entire garret. A garret (in case you didn’t know, and why would you because you probably don’t live in one?) is a cramped sort of room huddled beneath a building’s roof. It’s the sort of dismal lodging preferred by bedraggled painters and poets who wallow in the gloom, supping thin porridge and creating “important” art.

  And while this may sound a bit depressing, the garret suited August just fine. He had, in fact, only recently claimed the space as his own, abandoning a much grander room with a fireplace on the first floor. It was true that the raw beams made for constant ducking and skull thumping. And indeed, much of the space was occupied by balding leather trunks, towers of musty storage boxes, and discarded household objects, including an old ironing board and a keyless piano. But the room had one unique and beneficial feature: it could be accessed only by a narrow staircase that Hydrangea’s expansive skirts could not pass.

  And so, above the realm of his aunt’s rules and barricades, August was able to glimpse the world outside from two small, unboarded windows that pierced the roof at front and back.

  From this lofty outlook, the vista seemed vast and fascinating. But in truth the house inhabited a quiet, forgotten corner of the county. Indeed, the dirt road ended at Locust Hole, giving few people reason to venture there. Occasionally an intrepid tourist, the kind who travels alone in comfortable shoes, might set up his fancy camera on a tripod to take atmospheric pictures. Beyond that, the grocer’s delivery boy, the mailman, and the critters of field and swamp provided the only comings and goings there were to observe.