Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris
Kate Grable desperately wants to be a doctor when she grows up so volunteering as the first aid person for her high school’s awful football team seems like a great idea. It has been. Until she finds unlabeled vials in Coach’s locked cabinet. Coach says they are just B12 and wants Kate to inject the team. She refuses. When one of the defensive linemen pukes black awful smelling vomit all over her car at a party, and she sees the infected injection site on his arm, she thinks back to those vials. And when more linebackers start acting strangely she knows she’s the only one close enough to the problem to find a solution. She dreads saying it, but it looks like her town has a zombie problem.
This is a great teen as hero book, and even better, geeky female teen as hero book. It’s pretty funny, in a sick sort of way. What sets this one apart from the others is that there is a cure. There isn’t a lot of science behind the cure, and things don’t totally add up, but the way the transformations are described is neat. Picture the typical zombie you see in a horror movie – no pain, no blood loss, yet a lot of loss of pieces. Inject a cure. Turn back on the blood flow. BIG mess, possibly life threatening to one suddenly alive again. Neat idea.
If you need a short distraction from the day to day and want to revisit the halls of your high school (albeit one with a zombie outbreak) take a break with this one.
