by R. McGeddon
Phoebe let out a gasp of horror. “Jesse?”
“Yes,” said Arty.
“Water balloons?”
“Yes,” said Sam.
Phoebe’s face went pale. “OMG, you can’t. Not Jesse! The only reason I’m hanging out with you lose—ahem … erm…” She rested a hand lightly against her forehead. “Somebody catch me. I’m totally going to faint!”
Phoebe swooned dramatically. The other three watched as she fell backward onto the ground. They stood staring at her for ages.
“I think you were meant to catch her,” Emmie said to Sam.
“What?” said Sam. “Why me?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to do it,” Emmie said.
“And I’ve got a bit of a sore back,” Arty added.
They continued to stare down at Phoebe.
“Hello?” Phoebe said. “Isn’t someone going to help me up?”
Nobody moved.
Arty turned to Emmie. “You hear what happened to Simon Stumble yesterday?”
“Head stuck in a door?” Emmie guessed.
“Nope.”
“Legs set on fire?”
“Nope.”
“Lost his other nostril?”
“Nope! Sprayed by weird chemicals from Pamplemousse’s lab,” Arty said.
“Poor Simon,” Emmie said.
“Yeah,” agreed Arty and Sam. “Poor Simon.”
“Never mind ‘poor Simon.’” Phoebe shrieked. “What about poor me?”
Sam reached out a hand. “Here, let me help you,” he said (because he’s nice like that). Phoebe took his hand and he began to pull her up.
“Jesse’s coming,” Arty hissed. Sam released his grip and Phoebe thudded back down onto the pavement.
“Like … ouch!”
“Where?” Sam asked.
Arty pointed to the end of the street, where his big brother and one of his friends were strolling along as if they owned the place.
“Where’s the ammo?” asked Emmie.
Sam opened his schoolbag. He and Arty had stocked up before heading to meet Emmie. Over a dozen fat water balloons wobbled inside the backpack. Emmie and Arty grabbed three each.
Arty hopped excitedly from foot to foot. “Jesse won’t know what hit him.”
Phoebe sat up sharply. “Did someone say Jesse?”
Emmie splattered one of the balloons across Phoebe’s head, the water shocking her into silence.
“Right. Places, everyone,” Sam urged as he began to climb a tree, while Arty and Emmie looked for hiding places of their own.
* * *
Hiding Places from Which to Launch a Sneak Attack
Good:
• Up a tree
• Behind a bush
• Around a corner
Bad:
• On top of a distant mountain
• Beneath a giant illuminated arrow with “Look Here!!” written on it
• A raised platform, surrounded by elephants, cheerleaders, and a brass band
* * *
Sam wriggled onto a high branch and lay down flat. Sitting Duck spread out below him like a rash. From up there, he could see Rickety Tower, the glass church, and the accordion maker’s workshop. Over to his left was the newspaper shop, which was built entirely out of recycled newspapers, and the cake shop, which was built entirely out of bricks and other building materials.
Sam sighed at the sight of it all. Sitting Duck was a funny old place, where nothing out of the ordinary ever happened or was ever likely to.
“Aim for the face,” Arty instructed. “Hit him right in his big, stupid face.”
“Ten-four,” replied Sam, turning his attention to matters at hand.
“Will do.” Emmie nodded.
Arty ducked behind a bush. He could hear his brother’s big, booming voice droning on about some pointless sporting fact. The water balloon wobbled in Arty’s pudgy hand. This was going to be utterly brilliant.
Although, he couldn’t help but think, feeding him to a shark would’ve been even better.
CHAPTER THREE
Water balloons rained down like … well, like rain, really. But rain encased in thin rubber. With knots at one end. So, you know, not exactly like rain.
They wobbled like wobbly things, fell like fally things, then exploded like explodey things. Suddenly finding himself soaked to the skin, Jesse began to shout. Like an angry thing.
“Wharughrugh!” he bellowed, too enraged to form actual words. “Ifurmingahum!”
No one present was able to speak Angry Jesse, but if they had been, they would have understood the first part of his furious garble to mean: “Gadzooks! I appear to have been set about by pranksters. This has made me most unhappy. A violent, almost certainly bloody vengeance shall be mine.”
They would also have understood the second part to mean: “I hope I don’t look like I’ve wet myself.”
Jesse needn’t have worried about that. He didn’t look like he’d wet himself. Not unless he had the world’s biggest bladder and the world’s worst aim—he was soaking wet from head to toe. But his ordeal wasn’t over yet.
One more rubber-clad raindrop sailed through the air toward him. If this were a film, we’d follow that raindrop in slow motion as it arced across the bright blue sky. We’d see the gleeful expressions frozen on the faces of Sam, Arty, and Emmie, and watch the faces of Jesse and his friend become fixed in masks of dripping wet horror.
If this were a film, there’d be a swelling of dramatic music or the sound of a heart beating to help ramp up the tension: Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom.
But it isn’t a film, and we don’t have any of those things. What we do have is a highly detailed and anatomically accurate picture of water exploding in Jesse’s big, confused face.
Okay, so we don’t have that, either. But that’s exactly what happened, so let’s all take a moment to imagine it, and then move on.
Done? Good.
Jesse squelched around to look at his friend. He had taken the brunt of the attack, so the other boy wasn’t as wet as Jesse was. That wasn’t saying much, though. There were fish swimming in the sea who weren’t as wet as Jesse was right at that moment.
Jesse’s friend was a hulking beast of a teenager who looked like a cross between a caveman and another, much larger caveman. His name is of absolutely no importance to the rest of the story, so let’s just call him “The Brute” (although in actual fact his real name is Ian, but deep down he’s never really felt like it suited him, and he might change it when he’s older).
“OMG, you’re soaking!” twittered Phoebe. She jumped to her feet and hurried toward Jesse.
Ker-sploosh! Three water balloons splattered against her one after the other.
Emmie’s voice floated out from her hiding place. “Thirty points.”
The water had blasted off most of Phoebe’s lip gloss and turned her blond hair into something that resembled a partially collapsed bird’s nest. She stared at Jesse, breathing heavily as the last of the water trickled down her nose and off her chin. Then, as if it would somehow make her look better, she slapped on some more lip gloss and attempted a shaky smile.
Arty, who had been crouching patiently in the shrubbery, popped up and let fly a final water balloon, but Jesse snatched it from the air. He held the balloon at arm’s length, then his hand tightened into a fist, and the balloon gave a soft, soggy pop.
Arty, frozen in panic, stared at his brother. Then he ducked and tried to pretend he wasn’t there. It didn’t work. In two big paces, Jesse was over at the bush. He dragged Arty through the prickly branches and hoisted him into the air, which, considering the size of Arty, was no mean feat.
“You soaked me,” Jesse growled. He had a real knack for stating the obvious.
“It was an accident!” Arty said.
“What? You accidentally filled a load of water balloons, accidentally hid behind a bush, then accidentally chucked them at me?” Jesse sneered. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You expect me to believe that liquid soap accidentally appeared in my cola?” Arty scoffed. “I was burping bubbles for days!”
“Flatten him,” growled The Brute, although at the same time he wondered quietly what he might one day change his name to. Bernard, maybe. Or possibly Abigail. Decisions, decisions.
There was a swoosh as Sam swung down from the tree. Right before that, he’d carefully zipped the unused balloons up in the backpack, which—without giving too much away—might be worth remembering for later.
“Back off, Ian,” warned Sam, who knew The Brute’s real name and thought that it actually suited him in a funny sort of way. “Leave him alone.”
“Yeah,” said Emmie, stepping out from behind something else. (I think it was a mailbox.) “Let him go.”
Jesse scowled. “Or what?”
Emmie heard a door being flung open behind her from the direction of the houses. “Or…” she began.
“Oi!” screeched Great-Aunt Doris. “What’s goin’ on? Whatchoo lot up to? Eh?”
“… her,” Emmie concluded.
“Clear off down yer own end, the lot of you,” Doris raged. “I’m warnin’ you—I know all yer moms.” The old woman’s eyes fell on Emmie. Not literally, of course. That would be hideous. “You!” she hissed.
Emmie turned and offered her sweetest smile, but Great-Aunt Doris was having none of it. She bounded along the path, scrawny arms flailing, wrinkled face sagging, rolling pin swooping and swishing this way and that.
Doris stopped, as she always did, when she reached the front gate, and pointed her rolling pin squarely at Emmie.
“You! You’re outside! You’re not upstairs,” yelped Doris, who could have given Jesse a real run for his money in the stating-the-obvious stakes.
“Hee-hee, now you’re in for it,” sniggered Jesse. He let go of Arty, allowing him to slump to the ground. “I’ll let the crazy old lady deal with you. Then I’ll kill you all later.”
“Something to look forward to,” muttered Sam as Doris launched into a full-scale rant.
“Sneakery!” she shrieked. “Sneakery and tippytoes! Whatchoo think you’re doing out there with them and not in here with me?”
“I—”
“I been talking to you for the past ten minutes, an’ all,” Doris raged. “I wondered why you were bein’ so quiet. ‘That’s not like her,’ I said. ‘That’s not like her being all quiet like that,’ I said.”
“Well—” Emmie began, trying to get a word in.
“But now we knows why, don’t we? Oh yes, now we knows why. Sneakery, that’s why! Sneakery and—”
To everyone’s relief, something round and fast chose exactly that moment to hit Doris squarely in the face. It was the sort of thing you’d see in Funniest Home Videos 3 or Getting Hit in the Face by Things 6. It sent Doris staggering backward into the garden. Her teeth flew out and landed on the grass. Which wouldn’t have been as big a deal if they’d been dentures.
The round thing, which was now not nearly as fast, plopped down into her prized begonias. Dazed from the impact, Doris reached down for it, eyes bleary and gums sore from the impact. “Balls!” she cried. “I hates balls!”
The inside of Doris’s shed was like an elephant’s graveyard for balls. She’d amassed quite a collection over the years. They were all stored in there, neatly stacked and carefully punctured, and this one was heading there, too.
Her fingers found the spherical object just as the tears that had filled her eyes began to clear. She noticed then that there was something different about this ball. It wasn’t perfectly round, for one thing. It had a face, for another. Great-Aunt Doris held it higher, and it was immediately obvious to Sam and the others that it wasn’t a ball at all.
It was a human head.
As they watched, the head opened its eyes. Its mouth flapped loosely, letting a purple tongue loll out. The eyes shifted and Arty got a horrible feeling they were shifting to look at him. There was something oddly familiar about the head, he thought. It took him a few moments to realize what it was.
It was the monobrow. The ginger monobrow.
Simon Stumble’s mouth gnashed hungrily, and a low groan burst from his bloated lips, demanding:
“Braaaaaiiins!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Great-Aunt Doris took a moment to collect her thoughts. Once she had collected them, they went something like this: Aaaaaaargh! Run away!
And so she did. Simon Stumble’s head thudded down onto the path as Doris let it drop. She scampered back up the steps and slammed the door behind her.
Then silence fell, broken only by the low moaning of the undead Simon and the squeaky parp of The Brute unexpectedly soiling himself. The Brute turned to ask Jesse what they should do, but Jesse had already taken a leaf out of Great-Aunt Doris’s book and was running back along the street as fast as his legs would carry him.
“Hey, wait for me,” The Brute cried, waddling after him.
Sam, Arty, and Emmie exchanged glances as another mouthful of mournful moaning floated out of Simon’s severed head. Cautiously, with Sam taking the lead, they tiptoed across to Great-Aunt Doris’s gate and peered down at the path.
Simon stared at them from beneath his ginger monobrow. His pupils were gray and glassy-looking. Emmie gave a shudder when she spotted them.
“Wow,” she said. “His eyes are really creepy.”
“His eyes are creepy?!” Arty spluttered. “It doesn’t bother you that he’s just a head?”
Sam leaned over the gate. “Simon, mate,” he said, raising his voice a little. “You all right?”
“Of course he’s not all right!” Arty said. “What sort of question is that?”
Phoebe had been quietly sulking about the water-balloon-to-the-face incident, but her curiosity finally got the better of her. She strolled over to see what all the fuss was about. She followed the gaze of Sam and the others until she spotted Simon’s head on the path. His mouth gnashed open and closed, spraying reddish-black droplets on the stone.
“Whoa,” she breathed, her eyes wide with horror. “What is up with that hairstyle? Frizzy is not a good look.”
“He’s just a head!” Arty yelped. “He doesn’t need grooming advice!”
Phoebe snorted. “Trust me, he totally does.”
“Is he going to be okay, do you think?” asked Emmie.
“Well, I doubt he’s going to go mountain biking anytime soon,” Sam said. He looked over at Arty. “What are you thinking?”
“That I might be sick.”
“I meant about what’s going on?” Sam said. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah, come on, let’s hear it, Mr. Big Brain,” said Emmie.
Down on the ground, Simon’s eyes widened. “Braaaaaiiins!”
“I’m … I’m not sure.”
“Any idea where Simon’s head came from?” Sam asked.
Phoebe’s hand shot up. “Simon’s neck?”
Everyone ignored her, especially Emmie, who ignored her twice as hard as the others did. Arty’s lips moved in silent calculation as he worked out the head’s trajectory without using his fingers or anything. He’s dead clever like that. There isn’t a number he hasn’t heard of. Seriously. Think of a number. Got one? Arty’s heard of it. He’s that good.
“Based on my calculations,” Arty began, “and bearing in mind that my brain is in the process of shutting down through sheer terror, I think the head came from somewhere over…”
He spun and pointed off in the direction of the flag shop at the end of the road.
“… there,” he said. Then his face went the color of Professor Pamplemousse’s hair. (Flip back if you’ve forgotten.) (Hint: It’s white.)
Shambling along the street toward them, barely even pausing to look in the window of the flag shop—which was a shame, because they stocked a really quite excellent range of flags and flag-related merchandise—were a number of hideous-looking figures. The exact number was six, which, incidentally, Arty had de
finitely heard of.
Their arms were reaching out in front of them, their gnarled fingers clawing at the air. They shuffled and staggered, their feet dragging on the pavement in a way that was sure to annoy moms everywhere. Their skin was gray and rotting, their hair coming out in great dirty clumps. And one of them was just a shambling body, confused as to where he’d thrown his own head.
“They’re z-z-z-z,” Arty shuttered. “Z-z-z-z—”
“Zombies,” Sam whispered. “Wow! I don’t believe it.”
“W-we should go,” Arty suggested.
“Much as I hate to agree with Big Brain…” Emmie began.
“Braaaaaiiins!” groaned Simon’s head.
Arty shot Emmie an imploring look. “Stop calling me that—you’re giving him ideas!”
“Maybe we should try to help them or something,” Sam said.
Phoebe rested a hand on Sam’s arm. “There’s nothing we can do for them. It’s too late,” she said, gesturing to the closest zombie. “I mean, just look at those shoes. They’re ruined.”
A group of zombies is a pretty terrifying prospect at the best of times, but when they suddenly start lurching at high speed toward you, they’re truly heart-stopping in their horrifying-ness. That was exactly what happened next, and it did Arty’s nerves no favors whatsoever.
“Actually, change of plan,” Sam shouted. “Run!”
They all turned sharply and set off away from the undead horde. Arty always took a while to build up speed, but he eventually gained a sort of terrible momentum, like a hippo on roller skates.
He lumbered through a garden, crashing straight through the front fence and out through the back. Sam, Emmie, and Phoebe hurried along behind him, with the pack of hungry undead hobbling along in hot pursuit.
Arty kept running until his legs and his lungs all got together and decided they’d had quite enough of that, thank you very much. He puffed and panted to a stop at the edge of the park.
Just beside them was the children’s play area, complete with swings, a slide, a seesaw, and a colorful wooden playhouse with a rainbow painted on the roof.
