The Last Kids on Earth and the Zombie Parade

Jack and Quint ride on top of Rover, following the shuffling zombies. It soon becomes clear that they are drawn to the shrieking noise, and Quint compares it to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Quint suggests that they could get a better—and safer—view from somewhere above street level. Jack leads them into the graveyard so that they can climb on top of the giant tomb at its center. From there, they see thousands of zombies filing through the city.

Jack raises his camera to take a photo but is interrupted by a petrified looking Quint. Jack feels the tomb beneath them begin to shake. It explodes outward, throwing them and tons of concrete everywhere. A giant hairy eyeball monster emerges from the explosion, and Jack quickly snaps a photograph of it for the bestiary. The flash bothers the hairy eyeball, and its hairs straighten out into quills that it shoots at them. As they attempt to run, Quint slams into a headstone. He is hit by one of the projectile quills. Jack sees his body lying limp, pinned to the tombstone.

Quint talks as if he is dying. Jack points out that the quill only hit his bathrobe, and that is why he’s pinned to the tombstone. In attempting to get out of the bathrobe, Quint tangles himself up worse and Jack has to pull him free. The bathrobe is shredded in the process, and Quint is left in just his boxers as he and Jack run for cover before the Hairy Eyeball monster unleashes another round of quills.

Quint wants to keep investigating the zombie parade, but Jack convinces him there will be another opportunity. Once the Hairy Eyeball monster has unloaded all its quills—rendering it a “hairless” Eyeball monster—Jack and Quint run for Rover and make their way home.

Jack wakes the next morning with numerous aches and pains from the previous night’s escapade. He worries about the zombie parade and whatever evil force might be calling them. June wants to know where he and Quint went the previous night and is annoyed that they didn’t wake her to go with them. Quint interrupts them with news that he has something to unveil.

Jack is hesitant to walk toward a beckoning Quint, as he suspects Quint has some devious plan. Not wanting to appear afraid, he walks over anyway, and is ensnared by a trap Quint has set. As he hangs upside down and is teased by June, Quint explains his plan. He is going to use the trap that just caught Jack to catch a zombie. Then, the next time they hear the shrieking sound, they will set the trap free and follow it. This should help them solve the mystery of where and why the zombies are disappearing.

Jack takes a shower and ruminates on all the strange discoveries that he and his friends have made recently. After Quint tells him the zombie traps will take two or three days to prepare, he decides to distract himself by filling out the bestiary Thrull gave them. He recruits June and Dirk to go questing with him, and they have a successful day documenting six new creatures. The next day, after finding another new monster—the Sludge Savage—they hear the shrieking sound again.

The three questers decide to investigate and seek out the source of the noise. They run toward it, but it stops as quickly as it started. The ensuing silence is broken by a sound Jack describes as being like a loud and creepy burp. The burp is then followed by a stream of zombies being launched into the air—as if by a catapult or some other projectile force—from a rooftop above them.

Jack, June, and Dirk take cover and prepare to fight the zombies. There are at least 50 zombies around them, but none of them get up. Upon closer inspection, Jack realizes that they have all had their brains sucked out of a fist-sized hole in their head. Jack wants to “freak out,” but as the leader, tries to remain calm. The friends all agree that they need to figure out what is happening with the zombies before it happens to them.

Jack, June, and Dirk are shaken by their discovery and have a quiet ride back to the tree house. They explain what happened to Quint, who shares their concern. However, he reveals he has completed his traps and that they will soon have a better understanding of what is going on. With the traps ready, the group loads up on snacks and prepares for a zombie stakeout. Because zombies have been harder to find lately, they ask Rover to help them locate some. He leads them to a back alleyway in town, and Dirk confirms that there are fresh zombie tracks on the ground.

Jack is initially excited by the prospect of a stakeout because he imagines it will be like in the movies. However, he quickly tires of all the waiting around and gets bored. June has brought Fun Dip, and the group overindulges to the point that they start to feel paranoia. Eventually, a zombie shuffles into Quint’s first trap, but its leg breaks off, rendering it useless for their plan. The second trap, which uses superglue, is equally fruitless, as a zombie falls face first into the trap and can no longer walk. The third trap works, and they catch a zombie in a net. However, once again, things are derailed, this time by the emergence of a Winged Wretch—a flying monster with razor sharp talons and teeth. The Winged Wretch grabs the zombie and then turns its attention to the group. Jack takes a quick snapshot of it for the bestiary. He loses his pants in the process but manages to get into cover with the rest of the group. Despite all the failures, Quint claims their stakeout was a success, as he has a new idea for how to catch a zombie.

Back at the tree house, Jack and Dirk discuss how lucky they were to escape the Winged Wretch while eating some vegetables from Dirk’s garden. The emergence of a completely unknown and seemingly powerful danger causes Jack to doubt their chances of survival. He decides they need to go back to Joe’s Pizza to see what Thrull and the other monsters think about the parading, brainless zombies.

The next day, Quint unveils his new plan to catch a zombie. It is a cage containing a model that looks and smells like June (it is wearing her clothes). He believes a zombie will smell the bait and enter the cage, which will trigger the door to shut, trapping it inside.

Jack insists they need to head to Joe’s Pizza before they go on another stakeout, so Quint sets up the trap on the street out front instead.

At Joe’s Pizza, Thrull and Bardle are in a back corner playing a game that appears to be a monster version of checkers. Quint explains the strange encounter with brainless zombies, and that zombies have been disappearing. Throughout the explanation, Bardle appears nervous. June points out that it is strange that these things started happening after all the monsters showed up at Joe’s Pizza. Bardle responds by claiming that the shrieking starting right after they appeared is merely a coincidence. Jack suddenly feels even more anxious because no one had mentioned the shrieking yet. Bardle tries to play it off, claiming he misheard, but the group is very suspicious that he is somehow involved.

Thrull is too busy eating to notice the tension, but says that he has heard enough and that he will battle any creature that puts his friends in danger. However, when he tries to get up, his leg gives way, and he collapses to the floor. Jack feels responsible for Thrull’s injury and wishes he had been able to save his friends and not put Thrull in harm’s way. To make Thrull feel better, he tells him about the success they’ve had filling out the bestiary.

Back at the tree house, a zombie has been caught in Quint’s trap. Jack wonders if they could turn it into a zombie butler, and names it Alfred. Wanting to clear his head, he goes for a walk. He decides he will focus his energy toward completing the bestiary until they hear the shrieking again.

A week passes with no shrieking. Jack finally convinces everyone to pull themselves away from studying Alfred so they can join him in filling out the bestiary. Quint creates a bunch of new monster hunting tools, and the next week is a whirlwind of finding and documenting new monsters. Finding monsters and snapping photos proves easy enough for the group, but capturing some “essence” of them is much more difficult.

One afternoon, June is fed up and explains that she needs music back in her life. Jack thinks she is speaking metaphorically, but she clarifies that she is literally talking about music. The next day, after bestiary questing, they head to June’s old house because her neighbors had a great sound system. The house stinks, and inside the walls are crawling with tiny insects that Jack describes as “triple the weirdness level” of anything you’d see on the Discovery Channel (161). June goes to retrieve the sound system, and Jack begins collecting samples of essence for the bestiary.

When Jack enters the kitchen, the insects begin to assemble into a much larger, nightmarish monster that is so scary it freezes him in place. Dirk runs in and scoops him up while June carries the speakers. On the car ride home, Jack realizes that his friends saved him this time and are more than capable of taking care of themselves.

After about three weeks have gone by, the group completes the final entry in bestiary—232 entries in total. However, there is still no sign of the shrieking. Jack sleeps gripping his blade, knowing that soon enough his new enemy will present itself again.