Frederik Dahl Dalby slimed across the viewing platform, looking down his nose. “Your weird friend is over there. We were just advising her to go somewhere else. Dangerous places, towers. Accidents happen. Don’t they, Calamity?”
Calamity Claus was the most accident-prone individual on Frederik’s Hill. He was leaning over the railings, paying no attention to the dizzying vertical drop. He gave a knowing chuckle and nodded.
At the far side of the platform was Pernille, arms folded tight, one leg crossed in front of the other, eyes narrowed in anger.
What had they said to her? He could guess. Weird. Freak. Foreigner. Or worse.
Are you all right? he mouthed.
She shrugged. Looked away. Wouldn’t give the bullies the satisfaction of knowing she wasn’t.
Air and sky all around them. A jumble of rooftops and chimneys. The uppermost windows of Municipal Hall, a couple of streets away. At its corner, a tall lighthouse that nobody knew was a lighthouse, a balcony halfway up its side, a clock above that, reading a quarter past three. And at the very top, massive screens of glass facing out from a green copper lantern house. Another of the mayor’s dark secrets. It made him shiver. Who did she spy on from up there? Or more to the point, who didn’t she spy on?
“Nothing to say, Flabby-wreck?” Frederik Dahl Dalby said, breathing down his neck.
“Don’t mock my accent.”
“What do you expect?” Erica laughed. “You can’t even say your own name properly.”
It was true. Frederik was almost twelve and he’d lived here all his life, but he couldn’t shake the traces of his parents’ foreign accent. The local language was impossible. Nothing was pronounced the way it looked. Pernille rhymed with vanilla, Claus rhymed with mouse, and Frederik rhymed with nothing whatsoever. Was that his fault? No, it wasn’t.
“I’ll say my name however I like.”
“Oooh! Look who’s gotten all brave.”
“Shut up.”
“What are you going to do about it, Fiddle-rock?” Dahl Dalby said. “There are none of your imaginary zombies to protect you up here.”
Frederik looked right into Dahl Dalby’s eyes. “What did you say to Pernille?”
“Nothing she doesn’t deserve.”
“What does she deserve?” Frederik was getting angry. “Insults? And why? Because she’s a tiny bit different from you?” He wasn’t going to stand by and let them do this anymore. He’d scared them away once. He and Pernille. Trapped in the dark by a whole group of them. Zombies, he had shouted. They’re here for your souls. And Frederik Dahl Dalby, Erica Engel, Calamity Claus, and the rest had fallen for it and fled like frightened lambs.
The memory made him smile.
“What?” said Dahl Dalby, instantly annoyed. “What?”
Erica Engel crowded in from the left. Pernille drifted their way. She’d seen he was outnumbered.
“Something to say to us, Feather-neck?” said Erica.
“No,” Frederik sighed. He pushed between the bullies and headed for the railing. Calamity Claus watched him come, leaned back, and folded his arms in a way that was probably meant to seem threatening, lost his balance, and tipped over the railing, eyes wide, flailing for a handhold.
Frederik grabbed his hand and yanked him back to the viewing platform. Calamity Claus fell hard on the stone, banged his knee, and yelped.
“You’re welcome,” Frederik said. He placed his hands on top of the railing and gazed into the distance, across the leafy trees of the Garden Park, up toward the summit of Frederik’s Hill. Above the eighteenth-century castle, flags flapped in the breeze. The yellow stone was patterned with white-framed windows, sunlight splintering off the glass. Steep grass ramparts fell away from its toes to the boating lake below.
Beyond the castle, out of sight, hidden below a lawn so flat and featureless that no one ever asked, there was one more secret—an old secret. Older than the mayor. A rusting complex of water tanks, long forgotten. It fed a maze of pipes that wormed and twisted under the whole of the borough. Those pipes did not react well to water pressure anymore. And living very nearby was an addled elephant keeper who firmly believed there was something bad inside those pipes.
Zombies.
The bullying neighbors didn’t scare Frederik anymore, but they were cruel and unkind. They’d hurt Pernille, and they deserved whatever he could think up.
“You’re right about the zombies,” he said. Softly.
“What?” said Dahl Dalby, close behind him.
“What?” asked Erica Engel.
“There are no zombies here,” Frederik said.
“No kidding,” Erica scoffed.
“They don’t exist,” said Dahl Dalby.
Frederik ignored them. Continued to stare at the castle on the hill. “The zombies are up there.”
Dahl Dalby, Erica, and Calamity Claus must have managed a full twenty seconds before they looked. He could tell how hard they were trying not to, gathered at the railing, faces frozen, blinking too much.
Claus gave in. “Up where?”
“Up there.” Frederik nodded toward the castle and the hill. “In their subterranean lair.”
“What lair?”
“There is no lair.”
“He’s lying.”
“He’s a liar!”
“No, he isn’t.” Pernille had joined them so quietly they hadn’t seen her arrive.
It made Erica jump, and that made her mad. She glared at Pernille. Bared her teeth. “Weirdo,” she hissed.
“When the zombies come,” said Frederik, “they will come from up there. They will sweep down the hillside, striking whoever crosses their path, crushing all before them.”
“You’re making it up.”
“If only I were.”
Dahl Dalby laughed. He tried to make it dismissive, disdainful. But it wasn’t convincing. He stared with Erica and Claus across the gaping space of sunshine and rooftops, treetops and hillside. Each of them suddenly paled.
“Anyway,” said Frederik. “See you around.” He took Pernille’s arm, and the two of them slipped through the door to the top of the ramp.
“Dimwits,” said Pernille.
“Half-wits,” said Frederik.
“And you duped them again, muffin. Thank you for that. Let’s visit someone more friendly. Let’s get ourselves some half-price chocolate.”
“All right, Miss Adventure,” he chuckled. “Let’s do that.”
Chapter 2
Contagious
The two of them swung through the door of the Ramasubramanian Superstore. It was musty smelling and oddly warm, with refrigerators rattling like they wouldn’t last the day.
“Zombies,” Pernille laughed. “They fell for it completely. Again.”
“Young man and young lady of the special club!” exclaimed Venkatamahesh Ramasubramanian. “Welcome back! My first customers today.” The little shopkeeper’s face sagged—it was midafternoon, after all. His business never seemed to improve. He wasn’t local enough for the locals. But Frederik and Pernille shopped here whenever they could. Mr. Ramasubramanian had helped them during their escapades with the mayor back in the spring. They had made him an inaugural member of their club of outsiders and misfits.
“What can I offer you?” he said. “Cocoa? I have plenty of cocoa. Special offer!” He gestured at a mountain of cans of cocoa powder piled high and scraping the ceiling.
“But it’s almost summer, dear man,” Pernille said. “Cocoa? The sun is shining out there.”
“Why have you got so much of it?” Frederik wondered.
“I invested in a bulk consignment,” the shopkeeper said, all the more deflated. “To restock after the colossal kerfuffle of which we do not speak. There was a wholesale discount. Special concessions and a cash-back coupon, redeemable in writing once all stocks
are sold, subject to availability. Conditions apply.”
“Have you sold any?”
“None at all. Not one tin. How I wish I could escape this millstone of a business.”
Pernille wrapped one long leg around the other and pirouetted slowly on the sticky floor. It was almost graceful. But not. “Wrong time of year for cocoa,” she said. “Could you disguise it as something more summery?”
“How about some kind of iced beverage?” Frederik said. “Call it chococcino. The big festival is soon. Think of all those thirsty people heading to the park. Thousands of them. They’ll pass directly by your door. Mix up a vat of iced chococcino and you’ll make a fortune.”
Mr. Ramasubramanian’s eyes brightened. “You are right. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“It wouldn’t occur to most minds,” Pernille said. “But my friend and I are experts at the unexpected. We’ve been practicing. Ever since the... Well, you remember.”
“The kerfuffle?” The little man stood before his unwanted cocoa and clasped his hands in nervous excitement. “Iced chococcino. I like that.”
“Everyone will like it,” said Frederik. “It’s a guaranteed bestseller. Now, do you have any special offers for us? Pulverized popcorn? Squished jelly beans?”
“You are a businessman, young sir.” Mr. Ramasubramanian waggled his head in respect. “A born persuader.”
“And summoner of zombies,” Pernille added, and they both laughed out loud.
“Zombies?” the shopkeeper said, taken aback.
“He set them on the neighbors,” Pernille explained. “Frightened them silly. And not for the first time.”
“That was you?”
“Imaginary zombies,” Frederik clarified. “Obviously. Zombies don’t exist.”
“They don’t?”
“No, of course not. We got the idea from a man we met some months ago. But he’s insane. There’s no such thing as zombies.”
The shopkeeper eyed Frederik, doubtful. He stepped to the counter and a pile of unsold newspapers. “Yesterday’s,” he said, and held one up for them to see.
The headline hit Frederik like a punch to the stomach. “‘Children Flee from Zombies’?” he gasped.
“Oh yes,” Pernille said. “Hadn’t you heard? It’s trending all over the social.”
“The what?”
“The social media. Don’t you dabble? I’ve been liking and un-liking things all morning. It’s hard to keep up. I’ve eleven thousand four hundred and sixty-three friends.”
He looked her directly in the chin. She was quite a lot taller than him. “No, you haven’t.”
“But I have. It’s so simple.”
“Do you know who any of them are?”
“Is that important? I hardly think so.”
He took the paper and stared at it, appalled.
“Zombies are a worrying development,” Mr. Ramasubramanian said, “for a borough that prides itself on order.”
“It’s a joke. A mistake. A silly rumor.”
Venkatamahesh rubbed at his forehead. “Vetala,” he said. “I fear it is the vetala of Hindu mythology: malevolent spirits who seize control of the bodies of the dead. My mother would speak of them sometimes in a hushed tone. They haunt the charnel grounds. They drive people to terror and madness.”
“It’s madness for sure,” said Frederik, “but I assure you it’s all made up. By a madman. He’s completely bananas.”
“Who is he?” asked Venkatamahesh.
“No one you’d know,” said Frederik and Pernille at exactly the same time.
“Forget I mentioned him,” Frederik said.
“Nothing to worry about,” Pernille added.
But it was. It really was.
Because there had been a colossal kerfuffle at the zoo after the earthquake, and while they hadn’t exactly caused it, they had played a very visible role in it. For weeks after, they barely dared to go outside. But school was school, and they couldn’t hide away. They had to carry on like normal—saying nothing, playing dumb.
It had, for once, been useful that other kids ignored them. Pernille was just that weird girl: too tall, too talkative, hair the wrong color for the rest of her. And Frederik was that short boy who couldn’t pronounce his own name. They took to meeting in secret after school, in side streets and alleyways. Pernille would chat at a pace he couldn’t process, he would try to reply, she would talk over him, and he would eventually stagger away, head buzzing. And oddly content. It was a rather extraordinary thing.
As the weeks passed, he’d finally started to feel safe again. Stopped looking over his shoulder. Stopped listening for that knock at the door. No one ever mentioned what had happened. The mayor’s clampdown was comprehensive. She had a festival to prepare for, a reputation to protect, and frankly, that was great. Precisely what they needed. Everything back to normal, more or less.
But now, from nowhere, zombies! What possible explanation could there be for zombies? Only one. And it pointed ominously back to Frederik and Pernille.
They hit the street, passing Frederik’s Sushi, Frederik’s Hardware, and Frederik’s Espresso. On Frederik’s Hill, it didn’t pay to name a business anything else. Pernille headed inside the upholsterer’s workshop where she lived, and he carried on around the corner to his own house, a block away.
Mother wasn’t home. Still at work at the library. He headed upstairs and found his father sitting in his office.
“Freddy!” said Father. “How’s your Saturday?” He balanced his spectacles on top of his head, stretched in his chair, and nearly toppled backward. “Heard the news? Hilarious.” He flipped his computer keyboard over and peeled a sticky note from the underside. “My password,” he explained. He typed, and his face was bathed in light from the screen.
“That’s not a secure place to keep your password.”
“Don’t worry. Get a load of this!”
“What is it? An email?” Frederik said. “To you?”
Immediate, it said. From the Office of Her Ladyship the Mayor of Frederik’s Hill. Kindly draft urgent resolution prohibiting all discussion of zombies, undead creatures, fanciful monsters of distressing nature, and zombies.
“It says ‘zombies’ twice,” Frederik said, his stomach fluttering.
“You’ve heard all this nonsense that’s going about? The stories you kids are cooking up.”
“Us kids?” Frederik said, and pretended to be calm about it. “Oh, yes. That? Yes.”
“The way I hear it,” Father chuckled, “you’ve all gone zombie bonkers! The zombie invasion of Frederik’s Hill. Fantastic. The mayor, of course, is hopping mad about it. But she’s always hopping mad about something. Pressures of the job, I suppose. In the Regulations Department, we’re keeping our heads down and pretending it isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t funny,” Frederik said.
“It’s hilarious. A hoot and a load of old hooey. Do you know where it came from? I do. I bet you can’t guess.”
Frederik tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Him. It came from him. Frederik. “I can’t imagine,” he managed.
“The editor of the Frederik’s Hill Times! Thomas Dahl Dalby. He lives across the courtyard.” Father nodded at the window and the golden afternoon beyond. “His son is your age. You must know the boy.”
“Frederik,” said Frederik coldly. “Frederik Dahl Dalby.”
“That’s him. One of your friends?”
“No.”
“Wise. His dad is widely known as Bad News Tommy. But the Dahl Dalbys have it coming this time.” His eyes twinkled with mischief. “Her Ladyship wants Dalby Senior drawn and quartered unless he names his source.”
Frederik was nodding along, but he was having difficulty breathing properly.
“Thing is,” Father went on, “Dalby Senior got the whole story from
Dalby Junior. His son! The kid’s convinced he was chased by a swarm of zombies. Is it a swarm? A plague? Well, anyway. There were a lot of them, according to the lad. And now the whole of Frederik’s Hill is talking about it.”
Frederik was nodding and nodding, couldn’t bring his head to stop, didn’t know what to do with it instead. “And when,” he said, “is this supposed to have happened? This zombie thing?”
“That’s the funniest part,” said Father. “Apparently, it was ages ago. A couple of months. But the boy never said. Just told his friends, a bunch of kids, and never mentioned a word to a grown-up. You can imagine what happened next.” He leaned close. “It’s gone bacterial.”
“You mean viral?”
“Completely contagious. Brilliant, isn’t it?” He rocked back in his chair with a belly laugh. “Serves the poisonous so-and-so right. Anyway. Better get on. Zombie embargo to enforce. No time for gossip. What would Her Ladyship say?” And he chuckled to himself while Frederik stared at his knees in shock. Frederik Dahl Dalby! Chased by zombies a couple of months ago. Frederik knew exactly when and exactly where and exactly who had brought those zombies to be. It was him and Pernille. Tired of the harassment, hitting back with a made-up story. Zombies! they had yelled to those kids in the dark. To Frederik Dahl Dalby. Zombies are coming!
And now, today, he’d done it again.
“By official decree of the borough of Frederik’s Hill,” his father mumbled, typing two-fingered, “the following supernatural beings are hereby banned from mention, conversation, communication, or other representation within the municipal boundaries originally designated by King Frederik the First.”
He paused, intertwined his fingers, flexed them the wrong way, laughed out loud once more, and then resumed. “Zombies, all forms; undead creatures; walking dead; crawling dead; dead on skateboards, trolleys, bikes, or otherwise mobile by any mode or means. Also ghosts, spirits, manifestations, specters, spooks, and ghouls.” He glanced sideways at Frederik and winked. “No point having this job if we can’t have fun with it, is there?”
Frederik Sandwich and the Mayor Who Lost Her Marbles Page 2
