My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish (13 page)

Sanj, in his best “innocent voice,” said to Mrs. Prentice, “I'm not sure what happened. I think it was something on Mr. Swanson's computer that he was reading. Have a look.” Sanj turned the computer screen to face Mrs. Prentice and pushed a button on the keyboard. In a second Mrs. Prentice was mumbling, “Swishy little fishy.”

“This is just too easy,” Sanj said, and did his sinister wheeze again. “Now come with me, Mrs. Prentice, and all you lovely fishy zombies. We're going to the hall to make an announcement to the school.”

Pradeep stood up and joined the line of zombie kids following Sanj.

“We'll take care of Mark and find Frankie,” I whispered. “You try and stop Sanj.”

Sami and I waited until everyone had left the room before we came out from under the desk. Just as we got to the door of the classroom we heard a flush. Then another, then another, then another. Then the cry of, “I'll find you, Fish! You can't hide from me!”

“Mark,” Sami and I said together. We peeked around the corner into the hallway. The boys' bathroom was next door. That's where Mark was, which meant Frankie was probably nearby too.

OK, there were three reasons why I couldn't take Sami in the boys' bathroom with me:

1. Mark was in there, and possibly Frankie, and with the two of them together that was not going to be pretty.

2. There are standing-up boys' toilets in there and I don't want to explain to a three-year-old girl what they are for.

3. The boys' bathroom is the one place in school that a guy can feel totally sure that he's never ever going to see a girl. If I brought Sami in, then I think I would be breaking a sacred code for all boykind.

“Sami, I need to send you somewhere safe while I go and help Frankie,” I said. But where was free from computers or whiteboards or anything that could zombify Sami with the virus? Then it came to me. Well, my stomach growled, which made me think I was hungry, which made me think of food, which made me think of lunch, which made me think of the cafeteria … Bingo! The one place in the school with no screens of any kind. The one place Sami would be safe.

“Go and hide in the cafeteria, Sami. I'll find you there. It's just down these stairs and around the corner.” She didn't seem to want to go. “They have cookies down there,” I added. Sami skipped off down the stairs. “Shhhh,” I whispered after her.

“Shhhhishy fisshhhhhhy,” she echoed back up the stairwell.

I snuck into the bathroom and hid behind the door. Mark was turning on all the taps one by one. Just as he got to the last sink and turned the tap, Frankie burst out of the pipe in a whoosh of water, flipped in the air over Mark's head, then over one of the stalls, and plopped into the toilet bowl. “Now I got you, Fish,” Mark said, and an Evil Scientist creepy smile spread across his face.

Mark ran to flush the toilet, but Frankie leaped to the next one just in time. You could see flashes of Frankie's green eyes and gold fins as he dived over the stalls. Mark just missed flushing him every time. When he reached the last toilet, Frankie leaped back over to the sinks again. The water was still running out of all the taps. Frankie landed in the first sink and Mark ran toward him with a plastic bag. Frankie tried to escape down the drain, but Mark had blocked the sinks with balled-up paper towels. They were filling up to overflowing and Frankie was desperately hopping back and forth between them, trying to avoid being scooped up by Mark. I had to save Frankie.

 

 

“Leave Frankie alone!” I shouted at Mark. I tried to grab his arm, but water was spilling from the sinks so that when Mark pushed me, I went sliding across the floor and whacked against the shower stall in the corner. The shower stall that had a drain in its floor that meant Frankie could get out!

“Frankie! Over here!” I yelled, lifting up the grate that blocked the drain.

Frankie's eyes burned a fiercer green. He propelled himself out of the sink using all his strength. As Frankie jumped he was facing the mirrors above the sink, but he was at eye level with Mark—just for a second. His stare met Mark's reflection and Mark suddenly looked over to the wall and toward my nostril. Frankie was hypnotizing him! But he suddenly dropped to the floor, breaking eye contact. Still, it was enough to stun him.

Frankie let the overflowing water carry him across the tiles and toward the drain. He flicked his tail in a wave to me as he passed by, and then he was down the drain and away from Mark.

“Arnnmmrrggg,” Mark moaned. He was coming out of his stunned zombified state. I had to get out of there. I scrambled across the wet floor and ran out the door.

As I got to the top of the stairs, an announcement came over the loudspeaker. It was Mrs. Prentice's voice, but she sounded weird. “Would all students and teachers please tune in to the internal school channel on the whiteboards or computers. We are now going to show a mandatory video about Internet safety. Everyone must watch.” I heard Sanj's sinister wheeze in the background. This was it. Sanj was going to hypnotize everyone in the school. I crossed my fingers and hoped that Pradeep could stop him in time. I knew Frankie was OK for now. I had to get Sami and go and help Pradeep.

As I tiptoed into the cafeteria in the basement, I could hear Sami's voice. I poked my head around the kitchen door and saw her sitting on one of the kitchen counters, with the lunch ladies gathered around. Oh no! What if they were zombie lunch ladies?! I was just about to jump out from behind the door and surprise the zombie lunch ladies when I heard Sami singing, “One, two, three, four, five, once I caught fishy alive…”

The lunch ladies all clapped. Good. They were distracted, now was my best chance for a rescue.

I pounced into the room doing my best ninja stance. “Hiiiii-ya!” I shouted. “I'm here, Sami, I'll save you!”

They all turned to look at me. At first they gave me the classic lunch-lady stare. The stare that said, “Don't you even ask me what's in this lunch because you don't want to know and anyway I'd have to kill you if I told you.”

Then the lunch lady with the orange hairnet smiled and said, “Oh, this is the little boy whose brother ate his egg this morning. Remember? I told you.” Then they all smiled and shared a look.

“Oh, yes, poor thing,” one said. They nodded sympathetically.

“So have you come to collect our little princess here?” the orange-hairnet lunch lady said as she lifted Sami off the counter. “She wandered in saying something about a fishy so I asked her if she knew any songs about fishies and she just started singing. You're a good little singer, aren't you?” she said, patting Sami on the head. The other lunch ladies nodded.

Sami looked at me and giggled.

I was stunned. I had never heard a lunch lady say anything but “More egg?” to me ever. They always looked so scary, but these ones seemed nice. And even better, they weren't fish zombies.

“Excuse me, ma'am?” I said.

“Oh, isn't he so polite? Not like some of them,” one of the lunch ladies said. They all nodded again.

“Have any of you looked at a computer this morning?” I asked.

“We don't need a computer down here, honey,” the hairnet lunch lady answered. “Why?”

I thought about explaining that my Evil Scientist big brother and Pradeep's Evil Computer Genius big brother had formed an evil society called BBEDLAM that had taken over the school's computers and, right now, they were planning on turning all the students and staff into fish zombies. But then I changed my mind.

Another announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Everyone seems to be online, so we'll start the program. I'm uploading the virus—I mean the
safety video
now,” Sanj said with the robot voice effect he had before. “Keep watching your screens until the film ends.”

After a few seconds I heard the creepy sound of hundreds of students and teachers all mumbling, “Swishy little fishy.” Too late to stop the school from being zombified now. But I could still stop it happening to us and the rest of the world.

“Your first command, my zombie fish slaves,” continued Sanj, “is find that little moron Tom—”

“And his moron fish,” Mark interrupted.

“And his moron fish,” Sanj repeated. “Then bring them to me.”