Flesh of the Zombie (6 page)

Two huge zombies
pinned Luke’s now human arms firmly behind his back as he was lifted onto the stage to face Sir Otto. Resus, Cleo and Tee were bundled up to stand with their friend.

“What do you want?” growled Luke.

“I would have thought that was obvious,” sneered Sir Otto. “I’ll take
Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street
, for a start, then there are the relics …”

Luke glared through the cloud of cigar smoke into the landlord’s greedy eyes. Sir Otto would use the combined power of the founding fathers’ relics to make the lives of Scream Street’s residents as miserable as possible.

“And what if I decide not to give them to you?” asked Luke.

“Then I toss you to this angry mob, and they take out their disappointment at the end of Deadstock on you,” smiled Sir Otto. “Once the zombies have finished plundering your corpses, I’ll help myself to Skipstone’s book anyway.”

Luke glanced down at the furious zombies pressing against the front of the stage. One of them had a broken neck, its top vertebra jutting through a gash at the back of its head. It hissed angrily.

Luke fixed his eyes on Sir Otto. “I don’t think you’ve got the
backbone.”

Resus’s eyes widened. “Er, Luke …” he said. “What are you doing?”

“He’s
spine
less,” replied Luke. “Whatever he takes, we’ll get it
back.”

“Luke!” hissed Resus. “What are you …?”

“Make no
bones
about it,” added Luke, as
slowly and as clearly as he could. “He’ll get it in the
neck.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Resus.

Cleo squealed in frustration. “Keep up!” she shouted. Reaching down, she grabbed the hissing zombie’s exposed white backbone and pulled. With a sickening squelch, the monster’s spine slid out of its body. There was a
pfft!
and the zombie crumpled to the ground.

Swinging the spine round, Cleo caught Sir Otto full in the face. The landlord’s cigar was thrust into his mouth, burning the tender skin at the back of his throat. He scrabbled around, gesturing wildly for someone to slap his back.

Meanwhile, the zombies holding Luke were distracted long enough for him to wriggle out of their grasp. He ran to the back of the stage, pushing over a wall of speakers to allow himself, Cleo, Resus and Tee to jump safely to the ground. The audience swarmed over the stage after them.

“What now?” asked Resus as the four of them ran from the charging zombies.

“The only thing we can do,” said Luke. “We go to the Underlands!”

Resus lifted the metal grille a few centimetres and peered out cautiously. A full-scale zombie riot was in progress. Luke, Resus, Cleo and Tee had managed to outrun the creatures, ducking into a drain at the back of Sneer Hall. The furious monsters, unable to find the people they considered responsible for the disappearance of Brain Drain, had turned their frustrations on Scream Street itself.

They lurched along the streets, smashing windows, uprooting lampposts and demolishing fences. The terrified residents hastily barricaded themselves into their homes.

Resus dropped the drain cover and slumped back into the hole. “You know we’re going to get the blame for this,” he said.

“But it was Sneer’s fault,” said Cleo. “He’s the one who wrote that stupid song and fired the band off to who knows where!”

Resus grinned wryly. “Talk about one-hit Underlands …”

“I still don’t get it,” admitted Luke. “How can singing a song cause you to vanish in a puff of smoke?”

“It must have been the spell ingredients Dixon stole from Everwell’s,” said Resus. “If Sir Otto mixed them together as he wrote the song, playing and singing it could well be the key to release the spell’s effects. Sort of like a password.”

“We could do with something like that to get us out of this drain,” groaned Luke, struggling to make himself comfortable against the damp wall.

“And it stinks down here,” said Tee.

“Well, feel free to walk away any time,” snorted Resus.

“We aren’t leaving Tee to the mercy of those monsters,” defended Cleo, glaring at the vampire in the darkness.

“He’s
one
of those monsters!” countered Resus.

“Resus Negative,” snapped Cleo, “I would have thought that you, of all people, would appreciate that you shouldn’t judge a person by their appearance.”

“If you’re going to start on about me not being a real vampire again—”

“Nobody’s starting anything,” Luke interrupted hurriedly. “We’ve got a problem, and the only way to solve it is to go to this Underlands
place and get Brain Drain back up here to continue playing.”

“You’re crazy,” said Resus. “No one goes to the Underlands on purpose!”

“Well, if we’ve any hope of collecting the next relic from Vein,” said Luke, “I guess we’re going to have to be the first.”

“You don’t get it. We
can’t
go to the Underlands,” said Resus. “The only creatures who even vaguely know how to get there are zombies, and as they’re all currently out for our blood, we haven’t got one to tunnel us there.”

Tee cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “you have …”

Resus produced a jar of glow-worms from his cloak and used their dim light to check the time. “That’s two hours we’ve been down here,” he moaned, “and we’re no closer to the Underlands than when we started!”

“You don’t know that,” said Cleo, collecting up the soil produced by Tee as he dug deeper into the ground. She in turn passed the earth back to Luke, who used it to fill in the rear of the tunnel. “We could be almost there.”

“Nonsense!” scoffed Resus. “I doubt we’ve travelled more than two or three metres. It’ll take days at this rate.”

Luke wiped the sweat from his face with a muddy hand. Tunnelling under Scream Street was hard enough without Resus and Cleo arguing all the way. “We don’t know how far or how deep we’ve gone,” he said patiently. “I suggest we trust Tee’s instincts for the time being.”

“Instincts?” laughed Resus, flinging his hands out. “He’s simply digging in the general direction of down. You don’t need zombie instincts to tell you that!”

“Stop waving about,” said Luke. “We’ll be down here a lot longer if you collapse the tunnel and bury us alive.”

Ignoring him, Resus continued to rant. “All I’m saying is that we’ll need to dig deeper than the sewer if we hope to get anywhere at all.” The vampire punched his fist down to emphasize his point, and as he did so his arm smashed through the floor of the tunnel and opened up a hole. Before he could even cry out in shock, the vampire had fallen through it into nothingness.

Luke lunged forwards and grabbed his friend’s
wrist as he slipped through the gap.

“Don’t let go!” Resus shouted in panic, his voice echoing around the tunnel above. Risking a glance down, he discovered that he was dangling high above the ground in what looked like another world. The sky was a deep pulsing red, and Luke’s arm appeared to be clutching his own through a bank of swirling, plum-coloured clouds.

Luke, Cleo and Tee dragged Resus back through the hole. The vampire struggled to catch his breath. “The Underlands …” he gasped. “We’re here!”

“All I can see is some kind of purple mist,” said Cleo, peering through the hole.

“Trust me, it’s down there,” said Resus. “A
long
way down there.”

“But we’ve only travelled a few metres,” said Luke. “You said so yourself.”

Resus shrugged. “I don’t know how it’s happened, but we’re definitely not beneath Scream Street any more.”

“I believe I can shed a little light on your situation,” came a muffled voice. Luke pulled
Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street
from his pocket and propped it up against the wall of the tunnel. The book’s author became bathed in the mysterious purple light from below. “You appear to have tapped into one of the Hex Hatches put in place by G.H.O.U.L. for the zombies to reach Deadstock.”

“Hex Hatches?” asked Luke.

“The Movers are required to relocate families over considerable distances in a short period of time,” explained Skipstone. “A Hex Hatch allows them to travel from one G.H.O.U.L. location to another with ease. Did you not hear the band’s singer say they had passed through one to get to
Scream Street this morning?”

“So we’ve been magically transported here, like Brain Drain?” asked Cleo.

“It would be more correct to say you have stumbled upon a magical shortcut,” explained Skipstone. “But the end result is much the same.”

“This is all very interesting,” said Resus, “but it doesn’t help us to get down there. We’re up at cloud level and I, for one, don’t fancy a free fall.”

“Have you got any rope in your cloak?” asked Luke.

“A bit, maybe, but nothing long enough.”

Cleo sighed and began to unwrap the bandages from around her waist. “Leave it to the girl to save the day, yet again. …”