by David Lubar
“Uh, thanks.” I looked at my drawing. Then I looked next to me, at Caleb’s drawing, and understood what Mr. Dorian meant. Caleb’s lines were sort of shaky. I checked out the rest of the drawings at our table. Denali’s was pretty good, but the other three were even worse than Caleb’s.
It was easy enough to understand what was happening. This was one of the reasons I was so good at video games now. My hand didn’t shake. It moved when I wanted it to move. It stayed still when I wanted it to stay still. I didn’t shake, tremble, quiver, or twitch.
I didn’t even shake when I headed off to BUM for my tests.
14
Top Secret
I’m glad you decided to join us, Nathan,” Mr. Murphy said after I stepped out of the elevator. He put his arm on my shoulder.
“I still don’t know what you want me to do,” I said.
He led me to the TV room. “I think this will answer some of your questions.”
A video started playing. “Welcome to BUM,” a man in a gray suit said. He was standing in front of a building that looked like a castle.
“As a new recruit, you are one of a rare few who are lucky enough to have special abilities. We’ll be making good use of those skills.” The camera pulled back to show an eagle gliding across a clear blue sky above the castle.
“BUM has a crucial mission. We protect people who can’t protect themselves. We make the world safe for freedom. We fight for things worth fighting for. We take things that are wrong and make them right.”
He talked for another fifteen minutes. Maybe I just didn’t know how to listen, but it really seemed like he didn’t say anything.
When the film ended, Mr. Murphy turned off the TV. “Okay. I trust that answered many of your questions. Now, let me hand you off to Dr. Cushing so she can start the tests.”
He led me back to her room. “Relax,” she said. “None of this will be scary.” She had me sit in a chair and then took my temperature, using one of those thermometers you stick in your ear.
“Hmmmm,” she said. “Two degrees Celsius above ambient room temperature. Interesting. There must be a slight amount of metabolic activity.”
I had the feeling Abigail would like her. I pointed to the bone machine. “How long until it’s ready to do my whole body?”
“It should be all set by Friday,” she said. “I’m just waiting for a couple parts I need to strengthen the beam.”
“That will be great.”
She took a needle from a drawer. “This will only hurt a bit.”
“Actually, it won’t hurt at all,” I said.
She held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t tell me anything about your abilities yet. I need to make sure these first tests are unbiased. If I know what you can do, it might influence my observations. Tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to analyze my results, I want you to come back and tell me all about yourself.”
She got a sample of my blood. That wasn’t easy, since my heart doesn’t beat. My blood just kind of stays in my veins. But she managed to get a little bit, which she said was all she needed. Even though it didn’t hurt, I still looked away when she stuck me with the needle.
Then she brushed a liquid on my arm. “Allergen,” she explained before I could ask, “I want to see if your body reacts to irritation.”
Then you should bring Mookie here.
A phone on the wall rang. She picked it up, listened, then said. “Sure. I’ll get you the sample.” Then she turned to me. “Sorry, I have to run something down the hall. I’ll be right back.”
As I was waiting, a man walked past, pushing a hand cart piled with boxes. They looked familiar. I got out of my chair and peeked out of the room. The man went all the way down to the end of the corridor, and then through a door. A moment later, he came back out with the empty cart.
“What was that?” I asked when he walked past me.
“Surplus,” he said.
Dr. Cushing came back before I could ask anything else.
“Let’s check that arm,” she said.
I sat back down. She looked at my arm with a huge magnifying glass, then scraped a small skin sample and put it in a glass tube. “No apparent reaction,” she said, typing some notes on a laptop computer.
After that, she tested my hearing. “More acute than normal,” she said. “As I expected.”
“Huh?”
“You have extra-sensitive hearing. Most people don’t notice the noise, but blood is flowing through their heads. That masks some sounds. But your blood doesn’t flow, so you hear better.”
“That’s sort of cool.” I added super hearing to my list of powers. Maybe that would allow me to find people who were screaming for help.
She ran a series of other tests, then said, “That’s plenty for one session. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I got up and headed for the elevator. I noticed that she didn’t offer to walk me there. I guess they trusted me.
On the way around the corner to meet up with Abigail and Mookie, I saw two more birds flying like they were out of control. One hit a house. The other tried to land on a phone line and missed it completely. It was definitely strange, but I had more important things on my mind.
“Remember that chemistry set your mom gave you?” I asked when I got there.
“My mom’s given me thirteen chemistry sets,” Abigail said. “Fourteen, if you count the one where all the bottles were empty. She scavenges things. But she’s been really good since we moved to the motel.”
“This was right after we took that hike in the woods,” I said. I remembered the whole thing pretty well. It happened while Abigail was trying to make the cure for me. “Little Genius?”
“Oh, that one. Yeah. Little Genius Chemistry Set. I got rid of it right away. It was completely dangerous. It had radium in it and mercury.”
“Yeah—you’d told us it was dangerous. Here’s the problem—I think I saw a stack of them at BUM. They put them in some kind of storeroom.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Abigail said. “What else was in the room?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance to look inside.”
“This isn’t good,” Abigail said. “We need to find out what they’ve got in there. That could help us figure out what BUM is really doing. It’s time to spy on the spies.”
That night, I spent some time drawing. It was nice, but I didn’t think it was the hobby I was looking for.
The next morning, as I pushed around my cereal, I heard my stomach growl.
“You’re getting quite an appetite,” Mom said.
“It’s a big one,” I said. I hoped all that chicken would hurry up and become mushy enough so I could get it out of my stomach. I looked silly with my pants pushed down below my gut. But at least my shirt sort of hid things a little.
All day Tuesday, the only thing I could think about was that I’d be going back to BUM and that, according to Abigail, I needed to do some spying of my own.
When I got there, Dr. Cushing was all set for my second session. This time, she had me tell her everything that had changed since I’d become a zombie. I showed her that I didn’t need to breathe.
“Very useful,” she said. “Between that and the minimal body temperature, there are so many potential ways we could use you.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s good to make use of your skills. I know you didn’t ask for this to happen. But you’ll be helping a lot of people. It’s okay to feel proud about that.”
A couple minutes later, she got another phone call. As soon as she left, I slipped down the hall to the room at the end of the corridor.
It was a storage room. I saw a stack of the chemistry sets. They were definitely the same kind that Abigail had tossed. I went deeper and checked the shelves. There were some toys, games, and books. I recognized one of the books. I’d read it last year. It was about a kid who was always fooling around with batteries. I almost took apart an o
ld car battery after that, but dad caught me and explained how there was acid and stuff inside.
I’d seen what I needed. I went back to the other room and waited for Dr. Cushing.
“That’s all,” she said as she finished up her tests. “We’re done.”
“Great.” I hurried out and met back up with my friends.
“There’s a lot of dangerous stuff in the storeroom,” I told Abigail. “Why would they have it?”
She started to look up, but she didn’t even get halfway there before her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open. “Ohmygosh!”
“What?”
“I don’t think they’re just looking for kids who’ve messed up,” she said. “I think they’re helping kids mess up.”
“I mess up enough without help,” Mookie said.
“Nobody would do something that awful,” I said.
“Yes, they would,” Abigail said. “History is full of stuff like that.”
“They want to help people,” I said. “I watched this whole movie about it. BUM isn’t evil. They’re good. They’re going to help me. They know lots of stuff about the corpse flower.”
“Oh-double-gosh!” Abigail said. Her eyes got wider.
“What?” I asked.
“The corpse flower isn’t allowed into the country,” she said. “So how did Uncle Zardo get it? Something rotten is going on here.”
“And here,” Mookie said, pointing to my stomach.
“Can we get in touch with him?” I asked Abigail. “I’m sure we’ll find out BUM had nothing to do with it.”
“He’s still on Bezimo Island, but he’s got an Internet phone.”
“So does my dad,” I said.
“Great,” Abigail said. “We can call Uncle Zardo from your house.”
We went to my place and got on the computer. Abigail made the call to her uncle.
“Hello, Twinkle,” he said.
Mookie snickered. She kicked him in the shin. Then she said, “Uncle Zardo, you used the wrong ingredient in the formula. Instead of the corpus flower, you used the corpse flower. Because of that, the Hurt-Be-Gone turned my friend into a zombie.”
“Oh, dear. That’s unfortunate. How’s he doing?”
“Better than you might expect for a dead kid,” Abigail said. “But we have a question. We were wondering how you got the corpse flower. It’s not legal to import it.”
“I know. I tried to get it and I failed. And then a package arrived at the lab.”
“Who brought the package?” I asked.
“Strange man,” Uncle Zardo said. “He had a funny accent. And peculiar ears.”
“Mr. Murphy,” I whispered as Abigail said good-bye to her uncle and hung up.
Abigail and I looked at each other. “It’s not my imagination,” she said. “They made it happen.”
“That’s awful,” Mookie said.
I felt like I’d been stabbed in the back. “No way I’m doing anything for them. Forget BUM. They can find another zombie to be their spy.”
“No, Nathan,” Abigail said. “You have to let them give you the treatment. You need to get your bones strengthened. You can quit after that. And we can expose them to the world. You’ll be a real hero for doing that. Think of all the kids you’ll save.”
She was right. I needed the treatment. And BUM needed to be exposed. After I got my bones taken care of, I could tell the world what BUM was doing. That would shut them down forever.
15
Would You Like Flies with That?
How long do you think we’re going to be wrestling?” Adam asked as we walked toward gym class on Wednesday.
“Forever, I hope,” Ferdinand said. “It’s the first thing we’ve ever done in gym where I didn’t get hurt.”
“Good stuff never lasts,” Mookie said. “We’ll probably have to do something stupid next, like square dancing with the girls.”
“I’d rather rip my arms off,” Adam said.
Mookie and I looked at each other, but neither of us said anything.
When we got to the gym, Mr. Lomux said, “I have great news for all of you. Since this class has done such an amazing job wrestling, I’ve arranged an exhibition at the high school. It took a lot of work, but I didn’t mind. You’ll be wrestling right after the varsity match on Saturday night. And that’s just the beginning.”
“Cool,” Adam said. “They’ve got an awesome gym.”
“Ravens rule!” Rodney shouted.
“This sounds dangerous,” Ferdinand said.
Mookie sighed. “There goes the weekend.”
“I’ve invited the whole school board to come,” Mr. Lomux said. “I want them to see the amazing progress you’ve made, thanks to my training methods. I’m expecting great things from some of you.”
He pointed right at me. “When they see the way I’ve whipped you kids into shape, I’ll be able to ask them for anything I want. We’ll have the most awesome gym class in the state. I’ll turn all of you into champion athletes. We won’t stop at wrestling. We’ll do this for every sport.”
When the full meaning of that sank in, it seemed to kill some of the excitement in the bleachers. As much as I figured most of my classmates would enjoy wrestling in front of a crowd, the rest of it sounded like it was going to be a major pain.
I forgot all about that at lunch, when the swarm of flies invaded. At first, I just heard screams. Then a couple kids at another table jumped up and started swatting at the air.
Flies—it looked like hundreds of them—swarmed into the cafeteria. They flew toward our table. I was about to start swatting when a bunch of them landed in front of me. I stared at the table. The flies had formed a word.
NATHAN!
They flew off the table, then flew back.
URGENT!
I looked out the window. There was a familiar figure across the street. Mr. Murphy, dressed like a mailman, was holding some sort of small box.
By then, the flies had formed a different message:
435 CALAGARY ST.
And finally:
AS SOON AS YOU CAN.
The flies rose from the table and flew out of the cafeteria. They buzzed down the hall and turned toward the front door. A couple of them hit the wall, making tiny explosions like baby firecrackers.
I looked around. Nobody else had noticed the message, except Abigail.
“I guess I’d better go,” I said.
She nodded. “Yeah, you’d better. But please be careful.”
Right after school, I headed for Calagary Street and looked for number 435. As I was checking the street numbers, I saw a cat climbing a tree. Halfway up, it slipped and fell. It reminded me of the bird from the other day. It got up, then licked itself a couple times and acted like it had meant to fall. I watched it until I was sure it was all right, then headed down the block.
The door to the building was open. There was thick dust on the floor, and one set of footprints. Not a whole lot of light came through the dirty windows. Mr. Murphy was standing inside. Stacks of wooden crates filled a lot of the floor.
“Ever heard of e-mail?” I asked. “Or the telephone?”
He shrugged. “You have to admit, the flies were sort of impressive.”
He had a point. “Why are we meeting here?”
“We live in dangerous times. I fear that BUM has been infiltrated by our enemies,” he said. “I don’t want them to know about you. You could very well be the greatest agent we’ve ever recruited.”
Greatest agent? That was cool. But I was more interested in the other part. “What enemies?”
“There are various organizations that want to destroy our free society. They may already be aware of your existence. We could all be in danger. Let’s sit. We need to go over everything you’ve noticed in the past week.”
I followed him to a bench that was against one wall, and resisted the urge to ask him whether he was the one who was destroying things. Just as we were about to sit, I heard a scraping sound from the oth
er side of a wall of crates.
“Stay here!” Mr. Murphy pushed me down and darted around the crates.
“Murphy!” someone shouted. “You’re finished.”
I heard a grunt, and a thud. There was a louder thump, and the wall of crates rocked like someone had slammed into it.
I got to my feet. There were more bangs and grunts, then a much louder crash. A couple crates toppled and fell on the other side.
I ran around. Mr. Murphy was on the ground. His legs were pinned under a crate. There was another guy sprawled out facedown. Between them, I saw a shiny box that was half shattered. A window in the wall was open. I guess the guy had come in that way.
I ran toward Mr. Murphy. He held up a hand. “Nathan, stop! That’s a bomb.”
I looked at the thing on the floor. It had colored wires in it, running to some sort of timer on one side. The number on the display was 00:47. A couple red sticks were taped to the other side.
“It’s going to explode in less than a minute.” He gasped and pressed one hand against his side. “Get out while you can.”
“What about you?” I wasn’t going to leave him. I glanced at the other guy. He wasn’t moving.
“There’s no time.”
I reached toward the crate. “Maybe I can lift it off.”
“Too heavy,” he said. “Just go!”
“Can’t I turn off the bomb?”
He shook his head. “One slip, and we’d both go up.”
“I don’t slip,” I said. I knelt next to him. “What do I have to do?”
“Are you sure you want to try this?” he asked.
“Dead sure.”
He pointed to a yellow wire. “You have to pull it from its clip and then guide it all the way out of the case. But you can’t make the slightest mistake. If the bare end touches any of the metal parts, it’s all over. As soon as it’s out, you can yank the red wire. That will stop the timer.”
I put my hand on the yellow wire. The case was split. I could see inside. The bare tip of the yellow wire was less than an eighth of an inch from the side. The display read 00:28.
