"BRRRAAAAAP!" Freddy belched.

"Excuse you!" Josie chuckled as she picked off an M&M and ate it.

"I've ever eaten anything so cinammon-y!" Alex said in surprise while staring at his cookie.

"I..." Crazy Dave then coughed and was gasping for air.

"Are you alright?!" Sunflower asked in worry. Dave then then let in a huge gulp of air and slowly exhaled.

"I'm fine," he replied. "I haven't eaten these in so long that I must've lost my immunity to their spiciness!"

"It's crazy to think you'd gain immunity at all!" Josie noted.

"Well, nothing's too crazy for Crazy Dave!" Dave said proudly with a smile.

ERT! ERT! ERT! Everyone then dropped their cookies and ran to the basement. When they got there, they were confused as to what was on the front lawn; they saw the 3 columns closest to the street covered in nothing but brown vases with question marks on them!

"What the heck are they doing there?" Alex asked.

"I'm not sure," Dave admitted. He then chucked quietly.

"Me and my buddy Harvey Flaxcaster used to break vases when we were bored," he explained. "So many good memories..."

"Well let's see what's in those vases out there," Alex commanded.

"How?" Freddy asked.

"We can break them!" Dave replied excitedly.

"I thought you said no more going outside," Josie pointed out.

"We don't have to go outside!" Dave explained. "I've been working on a way to interact with objects outside the house without leaving the basement."

"How?" Freddy asked.

"By clicking on the square the object is on via the laptop, it'll interact with the object!"

"So we could've been using that instead of the Plants?" Alex asked.

"Well, it only works on inanimate objects."

"Oh..."

"Anyway!" the lunatic exclaimed. "Let's smash these like we mean it!"

He then clicked on the middle vase in the closest colum to the house. Everyone was surely surprised when it broke. They were even more surprised when a zombie came out of it! It then slowly crept towards the house!

"Now what?!" Josie gasped. Without replying, Dave clicked on another vase. That one had a zombie in it, too!

"This is bad!" Alex said in fear. Dave then surprised them all by smashing another vase! But what shocked everyone was the fact this one contained not a zombie, but a Peashooter!

"What the heck...?" Dave murmured. But he clearly didn't think too hard on it, as he took the Peashooter and planted it in front of the zombies! It worked just as fine as a regular Peashooter, which was what shocked them all.

"How did they manage to get a Peashooter?" Freddy demanded to know. "And more importantly, why would they send it to us with a bunch of zombies?"

"I don't know," Dave admitted, "but it's definitely helping!"

After another minute, Dave managed to break all the remaining vases. Most contained more zombies, but a good portion had Peashooters AND Squashes, as well!

"Man, I broke those vases nice and good!" Dave said with a smile. "Broke 'em like the time I broke my back digging through those trash cans!"

Suddenly, the TV flashed a bright white light! It made everyone squint in pain. Then, the light disappeared. When they looked back at the screen, their hearts sunk; there were more vases, and there were FOUR columns of them now!

"Well that's just great..." Freddy scoffed sarcastically.

"Hey, some of these vases are green!" Dave pointed out. Sure enough, 2 of the vases were bright green and had a leaf on them!

"Well, you might wanna be careful about breaking vases too fast," Alex pointed out. "You don't want to end up with more zombies than you can handle."

Dave then nodded and started planting. He instantly clicked the green vases. In one of then was a Squash, and a Snow Pea in the other! Most of the remaining ones contained Regular, Bucket Head, and a Football Zombie, but the few others had Peashooters, more Squashes, and more Snow Peas! After planting stradigically, the zombies were taken out in no time!

Before Dave could shout in victory, the screen flashed white again. This time, FIVE columns were filled!

"All right!" Dave said with a hint of annoyance. "This should be the last of 'em! If I break these, then I'll be all done!"

This time, 3 green vases were in the plie. Those turned out to contain 2 Hypno-Shrooms and a Snow Pea. The zombies hidden in the vases were Regulars, Bucket Heads, a Dancer, and a Jack-In-The-Box that exploded instantly! Fortunately, it also blew up the vases surrounding it, saving time and giving more Plants!

Using the Peashooters, Snow Peas, and Hypno-Shrooms in the vases, Crazy Dave took all the zombies out! The screen didn't flash again, which made all the humans sigh in relief.

"I still wonder how they managed to get all those Plants," Dave said to nobody in particular.

"Who knows," Alex replied. "All that matters is we got them! Don't bother looking the gift horse in the mouth!"

"You're right," Josie said with a smile. "Let's just go back upstairs and eat more cookies!"

With that, the humans returned upstairs, leaving the Plants alone.

"They are quite the smart bunch of people," Blover told them all.

"You have no idea," Peashooter said with a chuckle. "They're pretty good at planting,  but they tend to have close calls sometimes."

"I heard mistakes are what make humans... well, humans," Cactus pointed out.

"Well, I guess," Peashooter said with a shrug. "At least they're nice people, especially Alex. He may seem a bit off, but I can tell he'd do anything to protect Josie and Freddy."

"Speaking of Josie," Sunflower commented, "she told Snow and I that this morning she told Alex she had a crush on him!"

"No kidding!" Wall-Nut said with surprise.

"How'd he take it?" asked Puff-Shroom.

"Well, apparently, he felt the same way back!" Sunflower replied with a giant grin.

"How romantic!" Lily Pad exclaimed.

"So what are they going to do about it?" asked Fume-Shroom.

"Well, Josie wants them to repopulate the planet the best they can," Sunflower explained, "but Alex wants to wait until they're safer."

"I guess that makes sense," Tall-Nut said with a nod. A few other Plants nodded in agreement as well.

"Well, only time can tell what will happen to them," Peashooter concluded. "All we can do is wait and keep helping them kill zombies."

The other Plants all agreed and decided to wait for more zombies.

*          *          *

10 minutes later, Alex laid down on the sofa and groaned in pain. He knew he'd regret eating all those cookies, but he didn't know it would be this soon.

"Stomach problems?"

Alex sat up and saw Josie on in the kitchen doorway with a grimace and holding her gut as well.

"Yeah..." Alex replied.

"Maybe I should've stopped at the 15th cookie.." Josie continued as she walked over to the couch and sat down.

"And I should've stopped at 30," Alex replied with a chuckle.

"I just can't believe Dave ate 50 without stopping!"

"I know, right?"

The two teens then chuckled for a few seconds before pausing in awkward silence.

"So, any thoughts on my idea?" Josie randomly asked. Alex just sighed.

"A little," he replied honestly. "I think we are getting a little safer, but I'm not sure how safe we are yet. Who knows what those zombies will do next..."

More awkward silence.

"Well, I guess we can just wait and see," she replied with a small smile.

"I guess," Alex replied with a smile, as well.

ERT! ERT! ERT! The teens got up and went into the basement. When downstairs, they saw Dave moving away from the workbench.

"How long have you been down here?" asked Josie.

"About 5 minutes," Crazy Dave replied. "I was bored and decided to experiment."

He then moved to reveal what appeared to be a Peashooter... with a Repeater's head sticking out the back of its head.

"Quite the experiment," Alex replied casually.

"Thanks!" Dave replied proudly. "I call him Split Pea!"

Everyone then heard the chair in front of the computer move. They looked and saw Freddy sitting down in it and starting to plant.

"Sorry for interrupting," Freddy told them without looking away. "I just thought I'd try and save our butts here."

He then began planting the usual setup. After a few minutes or so, when the fog was cleared by Planterns, Freddy looked at the TV with confusion.

"Look here," he told them while pointing. Everyone looked and saw what appeared to be a small pile of dirt moving towards the back of the house!

"Is that one of the zombies?!" Alex demanded to know.

His question was answered when the plie of dirt reached the back of the house. At the last square, a zombie popped out of the ground!

This zombie was decked in what appeared to be a miner's outfit. He had a helmet with a light in the front, a red plaid shirt, blue denim overalls, one shoe, and a pickaxe.

What surprised them all the most was the fact the zombie started walking towards not the house, but the opposite way!

"What the heck...?" Josie asked in confusion.

"I guess these zombies aren't as smart as we think," Alex commented. "And we don't think they're smart at all!"

But everyone quickly realized what was happening when the Digger Zombie started eating the Sun-Shroom in the back of the row!

"He's going to eat everything in the row!" Freddy gasped.

"Hold on!" Dave exclaimed. He then ran over, grabbed Split Pea, and added his data into the computer.

"Plant him!" Dave commanded at Freddy. Without questioning, Freddy quickly placed the Split Pea a few squares ahead of the Digger.

The Plant instantly spat out one pea at a time towards the oncoming zombies. However, the back end started firing two peas at once towards the Digger Zombie! Before too many more Plants got eaten, the Digger Zombie was decapitated and he collapsed.

"That was close!" Alex said after deeply exhaling.

After that, another pile of dirt moved towards the house, as well! Without being told, Freddy planted another Split Pea in the same row as the pile.

When the Digger Zombie popped out of the ground, it was instantly pummeled with peas! After a few seconds, he was down and dead. It then took another minute before stopping the remaining zombies.

"That was intense!" Freddy said with a deep exhale.

"These zombies are sure getting creative with their attacks," Dave pointed out. "So we gotta get creative with our Plants."

"I think we should make a Plant that fires in multiple directions," Josie suggested. "I mean, it'll shoot forward, but it'll also shoot behind it and areas around it."

"Sounds good," Dave replied with a smile. "I'll get on that."

He then walked over to the workbench while the teens went upstairs.

"So now what?" Freddy asked.

"I'm not sure," Josie replied.

Alex then let out a giant yawn.

"I could really use a nap," he told them, "but I know those zombies are going to be back soon."

"Well, think of the buzzer as an alarm clock," Josie replied with a smile while pointing to the red light on the wall. "I think we could ALL use a nap right about now."

"I second that!" Freddy agreed with a giant yawn.

With that, the teens went up to their rooms and laid down. Alex closed his eyes and felt himself quickly falling asleep.

*          *          *

He then opened his eyes again after what seemed like a few minutes. It was still dark outside, but that didn't surprise him. What DID surprise him was what sounded like a door being opened in the distance.

He quickly sat up in his bed and turned towards his bedroom door. It was wide open, but it was like that when he fell asleep.

He then heard what sounded like someone slowly walking up the stairs. A shadow on the wall revealed what appeared to be a large figure with a square object with a long stick on the front of it on his head.

Alex just sighed with relief; it was just Crazy Dave. Alex then just laid back down and slowly closed his eyes again.

A few seconds later, he heard footsteps walking into his room. He slowly opened his eyes to reveal the same figure right in front of his bed.

Alex then leaned up to look at Dave's face. When he did, he quickly opened his eyes completely and yelled in fear.

While the figure before him looked a lot like Crazy Dave, it also had pale green skin and a signature growl! It was a zombie version of Dave!

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" Alex screamed in terror as the zombie leaned to bite his face!