by Mo O’Hara
“I’ll head up and recon what they’re doing in the lab,” I said to Pradeep. “We’ll keep in contact with clicks.” There’s a button on our walkie-talkies for tapping out Morse code. Pradeep and I haven’t actually learned the real Morse code yet, so we do two different tunes with the clicks to say how things are going. If everything is fine, we click:
SHORT SHORT LONG,
SHORT SHORT LONG,
SHORT SHORT SHORT SHORT LONG (TO THE TUNE OF “JINGLE BELLS” ’CAUSE IT’S A HAPPY SONG).
If it’s an emergency, we click:
LONG SHORT,
LONG SHORT,
SHORT SHORT LONG LONG (TO THE END BIT OF “RING AROUND THE ROSIE” ’CAUSE IT SEEMS LIKE A HAPPY SONG, BUT IT’S REALLY ABOUT THE PLAGUE. WHICH WAS A PRETTY MAJOR EMERGENCY).
I got another bathroom pass from Mr. Swanson (he must have thought I had serious bladder problems) and headed out into the hall. Just as I reached the staircase, I heard a familiar voice.
“Swishy little fishy,” Sami chanted as she skipped along the hallway in front of Pradeep’s mom.
I looked at Sami. Her eyes stared through the display board on the wall and up my left nostril. The zombie stare. Frankie had hypnotized Sami again, so he must be close by.
“Ah, Tom,” Mrs. Kumar said. “The secretary told me that Pradeep would be in one of these classrooms up here doing computer things. Do you know which one? I’ve brought his lunch.”
Sami was holding Pradeep’s teddy-bear lunchbox—the one he keeps trying to lose or destroy and his mom keeps finding and fixing. He even let the school bus run over it, but it still didn’t break. I bet in a thousand years’ time archaeologists will find Pradeep’s teddy-bear lunchbox still intact, with his mom’s super-plastic-wrapped samosas inside.
Sami opened the lunchbox’s lid just a crack and there inside, swimming around in his plastic bag, was Frankie. I quickly slammed the lid shut.
“Um, I can take the lunchbox to him,” I said, trying to grab it from Sami.
“Swishy fishy.” She pouted and held on tight to the handle.
“OK, maybe Sami can bring the lunchbox,” I said, loud enough so that Frankie would hear me and use his hypnotic powers to control Sami. Just then I saw a flash of white as someone passed behind Mrs. Kumar. It was Mark, still in his Evil Scientist coat.
“Mark!” I shouted, but he’d already run up the stairs.
The lunchbox started to shake back and forth in Sami’s hands. Oh great, Frankie had heard Mark’s name and was probably now in full green-eyed revenge mode.
“Here, let me hold that, Sami,” I said, peeking inside the lid as she let me take it from her. Frankie’s eyes were bright green and his tail whacked hard against the sides of the bag.
“Why are you shaking Pradeep’s lunch?” Mrs. Kumar asked.
“Um, that’s the way Pradeep likes it.” I smiled nervously. “Come on, Sami, let’s get this to Pradeep while it’s still … freshly … shook.”
Sami looked starey-eyed at me but followed as I headed for the stairs. “I’ll bring Sami back down to the office after we find Pradeep,” I called to Mrs. Kumar.
We ran up the stairs. Mark must have headed for the science lab. Sami, Frankie, and I would trick Mark and Sanj into chasing after us, then Pradeep could sneak into the lab and wipe the website, stopping BBEDLAM in its tracks. And all before our first class was over. This was going to be easy. I handed Sami the lunchbox as I opened the science-lab door.
As soon as we stepped inside I knew it was a trap. Mostly because a big mosquito net fell from the ceiling and trapped us. Sami dropped the lunchbox as she fell and it skidded across the floor. I heard Mark’s Evil Scientist laugh: “Mwhahahahahahaha! Ha—suckers!”
Mark and Sanj stepped out from behind the door.
“Everything has gone exactly to plan.” Sanj clapped with excitement. “We lied our way into your pathetic little school, we tricked you into bringing the fish with you this morning, we made it so easy for my little moron brother to find our website, and then we tricked you into following Mark up here.”
“Yeah, suckers!” Mark said again.
“And now you are our prisoner.” Sanj paused. “Oh, hi, Sami,” he added.
“Swishy little fishy,” Sami said, wriggling under the net.
“Yes, exactly. So where is the fish?” Sanj said.
I stared at Sanj but said nothing.
“Moron, where’s the fish?” Mark grunted and kicked my leg.
“I won’t tell,” I said. Just then the lunchbox started crashing around on its own on the floor, steadily bumping toward Mark.
“I think we found it,” said Sanj, reaching down and lifting Frankie’s plastic bag out from the lunchbox.
Sanj handed the bag to Mark and picked up his laptop. Frankie was flipping his tail wildly back and forth and his eyes were glow-in-the-dark green. Mark put on his Evil Scientist protective goggles and glared at Frankie. Frankie glared back, harder.
Then Mark turned to Sanj. “So you got it?” he asked, taking off his goggles.
“Yes, thank you, that was sufficient,” Sanj answered.
“Cool. Now we got the zombie stare!” Mark said, tapping the little webcam attached to the side of his goggles. “Wicked! Now I can do whatever I want to the fish, right?” he added, dumping Frankie out of his bag and into a glass beaker that was sitting on top of an unlit Bunsen burner, next to a row of test tubes filled with colored liquid.
“Don’t hurt him!” I shouted from under the net, struggling to break free.
“The moron is right for now,” Sanj said. “Let’s see if the plan works first before you dispose of the fish. The computer class will all be looking at their screens, so I’ll test BBEDLAM’s zombie fish-stare hypno-virus on them.”
Sanj hit some buttons on his computer and an image streamed onto the whiteboard in the science lab. He must have set up a secret camera in the computer lab. You could see the back of Mr. Swanson’s head and then all the kids in front of him, looking at their computers.
“Sanj, Pradeep is in there. What will it do to him?” I said.
“Let’s see.” Sanj smiled an evil smile and hit “send.”
I watched the whiteboard. The millipedes and cockroaches were now using my stomach as a bouncy castle.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Pradeep was right at the back of the classroom, so I couldn’t see his face very well, but all the other kids were sitting at their screens and staring like … zombies. Then Pradeep’s mom walked into the room and started talking to Mr. Swanson. But as soon as she glanced at a computer screen she immediately stared at the wall and up Mr. Swanson’s left nostril. Mr. Swanson was clearly zombified too.
Sami looked at the image of her mom on the whiteboard. “Swishy fishy mommy,” she chanted.
“I think you’re right, Sami,” I whispered.
“Mom?” Sanj said, surprised. “Oh well, that will keep her out of the way.”
“Result!” Mark said and punched the air. Then he looked confused. “That’s what it was supposed to do—right, Sanj?”
“Yes, it works perfectly. We can upload the zombie hypno-virus onto any computer, and whoever looks at the screen will instantly be hypnotized into being our zombie fish slave. Then we can program them to do whatever we want!” Sanj attempted an evil laugh, but it came out more like a gasping wheeze.
Mark did an absolutely flawless evil laugh. You have to give it to him. Sanj might have smarter plans, but Mark’s got the evil laugh down.
“So now can I do what I want to the fish?” Mark said.
Just then I heard a crash of breaking glass. Frankie had knocked the beaker off the tripod and was surfing in the rush of water across the lab bench. His eyes glowed a perfect shade of revenge green.
“Stupid moron fish!” Mark shouted, and clambered over the bench toward Frankie.
Frankie dodged Mark’s hands as they tried to flatten him. The wave was rolling in one direc
tion—toward the sink at the end of the bench.
“No!” I shouted.
“Swishy little fishy,” Sami squealed.
Mark ran to the sink and held out his hands to catch the fish. But Frankie leaped into the air, thwacked Mark around the face with his tail, did a perfect somersault, and dived directly down the drain. If there were an Olympic event in Zombie Fish Diving, he so would have won the gold!
“Moron fish!” Mark thumped the bench with his fist. “Oww!” he said, and rubbed his hand.
“Oh, get over it, Mark. We have bigger fish to fry.” Sanj smiled at his own joke but Mark just looked confused. “Bigger FISH to fry,” repeated Sanj. Still no reaction. “Oh, never mind.” He sighed. “Now we need to keep these two here so they don’t mess up Stage Two of BBEDLAM’s plan.”
“What’s Stage Two?” Mark and I said at exactly the same time.
“Turning the whole school into fish-stare zombie slaves. Keep up,” Sanj said. “All the little moron brothers and sisters will do whatever I tell them to. Then, who knows, maybe I’ll just upload the Zombie Goldfish Virus on the Internet. Soon there’ll be fish-stare zombies everywhere.” Sanj paused again. “Now would be a good time for your evil laugh, Mark.”
“I’m not in the mood,” Mark grumped. “I want to hurt that fish and I’m gonna search this school until I find him.” He stormed off.
“Whatever. I don’t need you anyway.” Sanj picked up his laptop. “Now I’m going to have a chat with the principal. I’ll be back in a second so don’t go anywhere.” Sanj attempted an evil laugh, but it just came out wheezy again. “Ahem, ahem.” He pretended he was clearing his throat and then followed Mark out of the lab.
Sami was still looking over at the sink. “Swishy fishy gone?” she mumbled. With Frankie gone, Sami came out of her trance. She didn’t look fish-starey anymore, just kind of sad.
“Frankie will be OK, Sami, as long as we find him before Mark does,” I said. “I’m more worried about Pradeep.”
What if my best friend was now a zombie fish slave?
I took my compass and protractor out of my pocket and used them to cut a hole in the net. I’m not sure what you’re actually supposed to use them for, but they’re pretty handy for poking holes in stuff. And I never thought I would be so grateful for math equipment.
I freed Sami and we both headed straight down to the computer room. Everyone was still and silent, and totally zombified. Sami ran up to her mom.
“Swishy fishy mommy.” She tugged on her mom’s skirt, but Mrs. Kumar didn’t move.
Then, from my walkie-talkie I heard some clicks:
SHORT SHORT LONG,
SHORT SHORT LONG,
SHORT SHORT SHORT SHORT LONG.
It was “Jingle Bells”! “Pradeep, where are you?” I whispered, looking around the classroom.
“Under here,” Pradeep whispered back. Sami and I ran to his desk and found him hiding underneath it.
“We thought you’d been zombified,” I said.
Sami crawled under the desk and hugged Pradeep. “Ahh. Not swishy fishy,” she said.
“I ducked under the desk when Mom came in,” explained Pradeep, “so I missed whatever it was that did this to them. I swear I saw a close-up picture of Frankie’s eyes on the screen before I jumped under the desk.”
“Sanj and Mark figured out a way to turn Frankie’s zombie stare into a computer virus,” I told him. “They tested it on the computer class and now they’re going to zombify the whole school and then the whole world!”
“Wow, they are thinking big.” Pradeep paused. “OK, if it’s our big brothers who are going to try to take over the world, then I guess it’s up to us to stop them.”
We high-fived. It was the kind of moment that called for a high five, I thought.
“So, where are Sanj and Mark now?” Pradeep asked. “And where’s Frankie?”
“Sanj has gone to find Mrs. Prentice, to zombify her, I think, and Frankie is somewhere in the water pipes. He escaped down a drain! Mark is trying to find him—he’s probably checking every sink and toilet in the school.”
We heard footsteps in the hall and then Sanj’s voice, along with Mrs. Prentice’s. I dropped down under the desk with Sami and Pradeep.
“Does Sanj think I was zombified?” Pradeep whispered.
I nodded.
“Then I can go undercover and see what he’s going to do. No one will suspect a fish zombie,” he said, and then slowly sat back up in his chair.
I tugged on Pradeep’s pant leg and when he looked down at me I did zombie eyes at him to remind him to put on the stare. He immediately started staring up Susan Renwick’s left nostril and at the wall. Pradeep is a pro.
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 wer
e 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.
