by David Lubar
Starscape Books by David Lubar
NOVELS
Flip
My Rotten Life: Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie, Book One
Hidden Talents
True Talents
STORY COLLECTIONS
The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies
and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
The Curse of the Campfire Weenies
and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
In the Land of the Lawn Weenies
and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Invasion of the Road Weenies
and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
A Tom Doherty Associates Book • New York
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEAD GUY SPY
Copyright © 2009 by David Lubar
Goop Soup excerpt copyright © 2009 by David Lubar
Reader’s Guide copyright © 2009 by Tor Books
All rights reserved.
A Starscape Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.torforge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lubar, David.
Dead guy spy / David Lubar.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Starscape Book.”
Summary: When fifth-grader Nathan Abercrombie, a half-dead zombie whose body cannot heal itself, is approached by messengers from the Bureau of Useful Misadventures (B.U.M.) and offered the chance for a cure if he will become a spy, he does not realize that B.U.M. is not exactly trustworthy.
ISBN 978-0-7653-1635-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-2507-5 (trade paperback)
[1. Zombies—Fiction. 2. Spies—Fiction. 3. Wrestling—Fiction.
4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L96775De 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009036337
First Edition: January 2010
Printed in December 2009 in the United States of America by RR Donnelley, Harrisonburg, Virginia
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Masae Namba, aka “Auntie,”
who keeps me supplied with lemons and good wishes
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. Bushwhacked!
2. Leaf Me Alone
3. I Scope Not
4. Squirreled Away
5. Snap the Ball
6. Model Behavior
7. A Sock in the Face
8. Let’s Call It a Meeting
9. Twitch Craft
10. Grout and About
11. Strengthening the Offer
12. Winging It
13. Gut Instincts
14. Top Secret
15. Would You Like Flies with That?
16. They’re All Bats
17. Large Scale Problems
18. Porking Out
19. The Parent Trap
20. A Leak in the News
21. A Brilliant Plan
22. An Unpleasant Outcome
Later
INTRODUCTION
I used to think secret agents were these awesome guys who drove fast cars, wore expensive clothes, and practiced deadly karate. Now I know better.
1
Bushwhacked!
It’s pretty creepy when some stranger follows you, spies on you, and tries to discover the deep, dark, half-cool, half-rotten secret that only your two closest friends in the world know about. It’s even creepier when it happens three times in one day.
It all started Monday morning, when Mookie and I were walking to school. He’d stayed over that weekend because his parents had won a free dinner at a restaurant in Vermont. Since we lived in New Jersey, it took them a while to get up there.
“I hope they bring me maple syrup,” Mookie said as we headed out the door. “It’s not just good for pancakes, you know. It’s awesome on everything. Even chicken wings.”
“I think I’d pick hot sauce,” I said. “Not that I’ll ever eat wings again.”
Food didn’t play a big part in my life—or death—these days. Anything I swallowed just stayed in my stomach and slowly rotted.
“Hey, there’s no law that says you have to stick with one sauce. You can mix them. That’s half the fun. Chocolate syrup and mustard are awesome on pretzels. I’d bet maple syrup and hot sauce would be great together. Sweet and spicy—yummmm.”
He closed his eyes, spun around, and made chewing sounds. The chews turned into a “gaaaahhh!” when he tripped on his laces. The “gaaaahhh!” ended with a crash as he slammed into a couple metal garbage cans at the end of a driveway, spilling out a mess of leftover food, crumpled paper, and these large gray lumps that might have been cat litter.
I went to help put the garbage back. That stuff doesn’t bother me. I can stick my face three inches from the grossest pile of week-old road kill without feeling a quiver in my gut.
Mookie had a pretty strong stomach, too. I’d seen him eat things that would make a cockroach puke. Once, he chomped down on a pickle he’d coated with strawberry jelly and dipped in crumbled fish sticks, just to gross out some girls at another lunch table.
But this stuff was making him gag. So I took care of the mess while he stood next to me and talked about the weirder and sloppier pieces.
“Whoa, that looks like pig intestines.”
“I really hope that’s just chocolate pudding.”
“Ick—who’d throw away that much oatmeal?”
“Oh, man—I think that’s a diaper.”
I finished up, then wiped my hands in the grass. “That’s weird,” Mookie said as he put the lids on the cans. “I don’t remember that bush.”
“What bush?”
“By the blue house.” He pointed back the way we’d come. “See that bush by the corner? It wasn’t there before.”
“So what. Maybe it’s new. People are always planting things around here. Come on. Let’s get going.”
Mookie kept glancing over his shoulder as we walked. “Ever feel like you’re being followed?”
“Only when you’re behind me.” I grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the school. Mookie got distracted pretty easily. Walking with him usually meant I did a lot of waiting up. Or backing up. Or grabbing and yanking. And a bit of picking up, since this wasn’t the first time in his life he’d crashed into stuff. I figure he wipes out about five garbage cans on an average week. If people ever turned into objects, Mookie would become a bowling ball.
“No, not like that. I mean secretly followed, like by someone who doesn’t want you to know he’s there.” He turned around again. “Whoa!”
“What?” I really didn’t want to stand around talking. We were going to be late for school if he kept this up.
He grabbed my shoulder. “The bush moved.”
“Knock it off.”
“Really,” Mookie said. “Seriously. I think it’s following us.”
“Bushes don’t move.”
“Right. And dead kids don’t walk.”
Okay, he had a point there. You could sort of call me dead. Or half-dead.
I’d accidentally gotten splashed with a whole jar of Hurt-Be-Gone by my friend Abigail’s crazy uncle Zardo. The formula was supposed to remove bad feelings. The problem was, he’d used one wrong ingredient. Yeah—just one. But it was enough to change my life, big time.
Now, I didn’t have a pulse or heartbeat. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t need to breathe. But I could walk, talk, and think. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I could do some pretty cool things. Maybe even some brave things.
Mookie liked to call me a zombie. I didn’t totally agree with that, but I definitely couldn’t explain how I was able to pass for a living kid. If I could walk, I guess a bush could move. I turned and looked.
“Whoa!”
The bush was less than a block away. I stared at it, waiting to see if it would move again. It just sat there, quivering in the light breeze. But there was no doubt it had moved. Mookie was right. We were being followed.
2
Leaf Me Alone
I walked toward the corner.
“What are you doing?” Mookie yelled after me.
“Finding out what’s going on,” I said.
“Be careful, it might attack you! I’ve read all these books where people get killed in the African bush.”
“I don’t think it’s the bushes that kill them. I think it’s lions or something.”
I wasn’t worried. The bush had floppy branches that drooped all the way to the ground, and tiny green leaves. There was nothing deadly about it. As I got closer, the bush started to inch backwards, like it was trying to move without looking like it was moving. I dashed forward.
“Yipes!” The cry came from behind the bush. A man tumbled backward, landing on his butt on the sidewalk. I guess he was trying to drag the bush and lost his grip.
That’s really strange, I thought as I got a good look at him. He was wearing a green flannel shirt, green corduroy pants, green gloves, green shoes, green socks, and a green wool cap pulled low over his forehead—exactly what someone would wear if he was trying to blend in with a bush. He looked pretty tall, though it was hard to tell for sure, since he was sprawled on the ground. He had red hair, big ears, and green eyes. If he’d been about three feet shorter, I would have asked him for his pot of gold.
Instead, I asked him something a lot more important. “Why are you following me?”
The man stood up and dusted his pants off. “What an absurd question. I am not following you. Should I be following you?”
He had an English accent, like the people in those infomercials who are trying to sound classy while they sell mops, vacuum cleaners, and grilled-cheese makers.
“Is there anything that makes you followable? Are you expecting to be followed? Hmmmm?”
“No . . .”
“Well, there you go. I certainly wouldn’t be following you, then. Would I?”
“Why are you dressed in green?”
“I’m Irish.”
“You sound British.”
“And you sound childish.” He leaned over and grabbed the bush. “If you must know, I am taking my new plant home.”
I walked down this street every day on the way to school. I didn’t recognize this guy. But I wasn’t going to waste time thinking about it. There was no reason not to believe him. He could have just moved in. I’d actually be a lot happier believing he wasn’t following me. The last thing I wanted was attention, especially now that I was working on a top-secret plan to do something really cool with my zombie powers.
“Okay. Sorry I made you fall.”
“I didn’t fall. I have excellent reflexes. I was merely resting.”
“Whatever.” I trotted back to Mookie. “He’s taking his new plant home. And he has excellent reflexes.”
“This town is getting weirder and weirder,” Mookie said.
We reached school without running into any more traveling plants.
Abigail was waiting for us by the front entrance. We’d only been friends for a little while, but we’d been through a lot during that time.
“Hi, guys.” She was still treating me special for saving her life, but I figured she’d get over it in another week or two. She had so many things racing through her mind, I’d bet that the old thoughts kept getting shoved out to make room for new ones.
She reached for my backpack. “Can I carry that for you?”
I stepped away from her. “I’m fine. It’s not heavy.”
“I know,” she said. “But you need to be careful not to strain anything. Your body can’t repair itself.”
“I’m careful.”
That was the biggest problem with being dead. My body didn’t heal. If I broke a finger or a toe, I had to glue it back with a special mixture I’d discovered. And then, for a couple seconds while my nerves flickered back to life, I felt a ton of pain, like my bones and muscles were being forced through a meat grinder. So I was more careful about accidents than most kids. But I wasn’t going to stop enjoying my life just because I was dead. If I started to hide from the world, I might as well just crawl into a grave and make friends with the worms.
The bell rang, and we headed to our home base in Room 103. When I dropped my language arts and social studies homework on Ms. Otranto’s desk, she looked up from her attendance book and smiled at me. “Thank you, Nathan.”
Since I didn’t need to sleep, I had plenty of time for homework. Teachers seem to like you a lot more when you do a good job on your assignments.
After social studies, we moved upstairs for science with Ms. Delambre. Instead of desks, we had lab tables and stools, just like the big kids had in Lonchan Middle School. Mookie and I used to sit by ourselves at a table near the window, but after we became friends with Abigail, she joined us.
Ms. Delambre pointed to a box of gears and pulleys. “We’re going to be experimenting with mechanical advantages today.”
My eyes drifted toward the window. I’d already read the gears-and-pulleys chapter in our textbook. I wasn’t a science genius like Abigail, but I pretty much understood the lesson, so I knew what Ms. Delambre was going to say. For a moment, as my mind wandered, I didn’t really look at anything in particular. Then, when I realized what I was seeing, I yelped and nearly toppled off my stool.
“Whoa!”
Ms. Delambre stopped in the middle of her sentence and stared at our table. “Is there a problem, Nathan?”
“No. Sorry.” I scrunched my stool back toward the table and tried to stare ahead. But I couldn’t resist the urge to get a better look. As soon as I could, I snuck another glance out the window.
It hadn’t been my imagination. There was a squirrel on top of a phone pole by the road, twenty or thirty feet away from the window. He was holding something the size of a large walnut. That wouldn’t have made me shout, except for one thing. The squirrel wasn’t getting ready to eat his lunch. This walnut had a tiny red light on it and a shiny lens. And it was aimed right at me.
“He’s got a squirrel-cam!” I gasped.
3
I Scope Not
Ms. Delambre shot me another glare. I clamped my mouth shut until she looked away. Then I smacked Mookie on the leg to get his attention.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered out of the side of his mouth.
I jerked my head toward the window, trying to get him to look that way.
“You have a twitch?” he asked. “Stiff neck?”
“Muscle spasm?” Abigail asked. “That’s peculiar. I wouldn’t expect dead muscles to twitch, unless they were exposed to an electric current.”
“No!” I snarled the word through gritted teeth, then pointed out the window. “Over there . . .”
Mookie and Abigail looked.
“What?” they both asked.
“That squirrel has a miniature camera,” I said.
Mookie squinted through his glasses, scrunching up hi
s forehead. “Come on. That’s just a walnut.”
“No way. Why would a squirrel hold a walnut up to his eyes?” I asked.
“So he could admire it?” Mookie said.
“Hutner! Nathan! Abigail! Do I have to separate the three of you?” Ms. Delambre always called Mookie by his real name, even though he begged her not to. His parents had planned to name him Hunter, but they’d messed up when they’d filled out his birth certificate.
“No. Sorry.” I waited until she finished explaining the experiment. When she started handing out the gears, I checked the window again. The squirrel was still there, and the camera was still aimed at me.
As soon as we started setting up our experiment, and kids at all the tables were talking, I said, “I’m sure it’s a camera. I need to get a closer look.”
“Too bad there’s no telescope in here,” Mookie said.
Abigail stared up at the ceiling, which told me she was thinking. Then she snapped her fingers. “Got it!” She pointed to one of the bins on the counter along the side wall, right past the sink. “Mookie, can you spill something into the red bin? The one with all the lenses.”
He turned toward the back of the room, then nodded, grabbed his pencil, and hopped off his stool. “I was born to spill.”
When he reached the sharpener, he started cranking away. “Hey—it’s full. I’ll empty it.” He pulled off the container and sprinted for the wastebasket.
When Mookie got near the red bin, he tripped on his loose sneaker lace—on purpose, for once—and lost his grip on the container. Shavings went flying. A bunch of them spilled onto the lenses.
“Hutner, get back in your seat,” Ms. Delambre said.
