Read War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) for Free Online

words, sometimes to odd affect.
    “Which is why I have already spoken to your teacher, requesting that you have tomorrow off,” Ms. Robins replied. “Not today. And besides, this surgery won’t be like the last one. It won’t be nearly as bad.”
    Maddy, who thought that all surgeries were very bad and very scary, pretended to agree. “I know. She’s having a sleeve resection done. It’s when they cut out a section of the bronchi that’s all tumored up before reattaching the good ends.” She had looked it up on the internet. There had even been a cartoon-like video that made the surgery look very neat and clean—no blood, no mess, no pale, sweating mommy who could barely talk afterwards and who sometimes cried. That was the real truth behind these surgeries. Maddy knew first hand.
    And there was another truth, one that no one talked about. One that was supposedly this big secret to protect little Maddy: Mommy wasn’t going to live no matter what they did. Everyone whispered it when they thought she couldn’t hear. This was why she was staying home, because what would happen if they were right? What would happen if mommy went to the hospital and never came back out?
    “I’m staying home,” she said, firmly.
    “You are not,” Ms. Robins said with equal firmness. She held up her smart phone, and showed a text to Maddy. “I’ve already called Ricky. He’ll be by with the car in twenty minutes.”
    Maddy’s hands had not budged from her skinny hips. “No. Tell Ricky, I don’t need him and his stupid limo today.”
    Ms. Robins looked sad all of a sudden. She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice. If you don’t get ready to go right this instant, young lady, I’m going to yank down those pants and give you a paddling like you haven’t had in ages.”
    The little girl was, quite unexpectedly, unsure of herself. “You can’t paddle me. You’re not allowed. I know it’s against the law. I saw it on TV.”
    “Wrong. I can paddle you until your bottom is as red as a tomato if your mom gives me permission to, and guess what? She already did.”
    Maddy took a step back. “No she didn’t. When?”
    “When she got sick again,” Ms. Robins said in low voice. There were little tears in her eyes that she blinked away. “She told me to raise you like she would have.”
    “But she never paddled me at all.”
    “Yes she has,” Ms. Robins replied. “I have seen it with my own two eyes. I was there for the first. You were not even one. You kept playing with an electric outlet and you wouldn’t listen when she scolded you and so…”
    “She spanked me?”
    “Yes, ma’am, and it wasn’t the last time either, but you were a smart cookie just like your parents and your grandparents, and you learned early to listen to adults when they asked you to do things, like going to school.”
    “This is different,” Maddy said, though now she was less convinced of the infallibility of her position. Ms. Robins was not a big woman but she could be sharp at times and right at that moment her eyes fairly sparked with determination. If she was going to be forced into spanking Maddy, it was clear she was going to make it count.
    “You are going to school,” Ms. Robins stated as fact. “I’d hate for you to go there with a blistered bottom and tears in your eyes.” Maddy was about to interject but Ms. Robins held up her large, pale hand. “Your mom needs her rest, however I’m sure she’ll be up by the time you come home. You can help me then, ok?”
    Defeated by logic and the threat of pain, Maddy rushed to get ready before the limo arrived to pick her up. She just managed to tiptoe into her parent’s bedroom with enough time to spare to give her mom a kiss on the forehead. Gabrielle Rothchild, in her seven hundred square foot bedroom, under her two thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, didn’t stir.
    “Love you, Mommy,” Maddy