The Zombie at the Finish Line

by Bill Doyle

  Cheers burst from the thousands of monsters who packed the stands. Even with the Conundrums and Patsy not showing up, Karl felt a jolt of happy excitement. Ever since he was a tiny cub, Karl had loved the Deadcathlon.

  There was always something new and nutty happening. The point of the Deadcathlon was that each event had a special twist. And that twist was decided by the mysterious purple-robed creatures who were called Spinners.

  In fact, the night before, the Spinners had set up purple curtains all around the stadium near the different events. At the beginning of each event, the curtain would be pulled back to reveal the surprise.

  One year, the wrong jump became the very, very wrong jump, in which athletes leapt over graves. The pole vault was the slime-pail vault. And instead of hurdling, there was a contest to see who could make the loudest blood-curdling screams.

  “I’m looking for a team that might be able to make a showing of things today,” Hairy Hairwell said, looking right at the Scream Team. “But I just don’t see one.”

  Trying to get his attention, Eric bounced up and down and Mike waved his tail like a flag.

  “Nope, still don’t see a team worth talking to,” Hairy said. “Oh! There!”

  He pushed past the Scream Team and walked over to Alphonse and the other Werewolves, who were warming up near their high-tech bus. As the winners of the trophy last year, the Werewolves still held on to the Conundrum Cup.

  “There it is!” Karl said, peering through the Werewolves’ bus’s window. The cup was made of rusted metal. He moved through the crowd so he could get a closer look. The handles on the sides were shaped like the Conundrums’ faces: One looked like Virgil and the other, Wyatt.

  “Alphonse, Dr. Neuron has called you the next Wolfenstein,” Hairy said. “What’s your goal in this year’s Deadcathlon?”

  Alphonse didn’t seem to realize there wasn’t a camera and kept flexing his arm muscles as he answered. “My goal is to push my inner monster, body and brain, to the last drop of energy.”

  Oh brother, Karl thought, but Hairy seemed to be eating it up.

  “That’s the answer of a true winner,” Hairy said. “Since the tragic events of the first Deadcathlon, the Werewolves have taken home the Conundrum Cup more than any other team. I have no doubt that their winning record will continue!”

  Alphonse and the rest of the Werewolves howled just as the five Spinners shuffled out to the center of the field.

  “What are they doing?” Beck asked.

  “It’s part of a Deadcathlon tradition,” J.D. said. “At the start, all teams have to sign up for the last event, the Monster Relay.”

  The Scream Team went over one by one to sign up. Karl waited until he thought no one was looking and then added another name under his own. Beck spotted what he was doing and pointed to the extra name.

  “You put Patsy’s name on the relay list, Karl?” Beck asked. “But she’s not coming, right?”

  J.D.’s eyes bugged out in shock. “The Monster Relay is worth five times the points of any other event!” he said. “When she doesn’t show up, we’ll lose the Deadcathlon for sure.”

  Karl didn’t want to hear it. “We have to get Patsy back so we can win the Conundrum Cup as a team,” he said stubbornly. “Then the coaches will stop fighting and we’ll finally break the—”

  “Don’t say it!” J.D. warned.

  But Karl was too worked up to stop. He shouted, “Conundrum Cup Curse!”

  Kaboom! A cannon fired. J.D. ducked. But it was just the starting cannon, and the crowd in the stands cheered. The Deadcathlon was officially underway!

  “The spooky-yard dash will be the first Deadcathlon event!” Hairy announced.

  Dennis would run the race for the Scream Team, and Karl thought for sure he’d come in at least second place. Dennis might not beat the runner from the Sea Monsters. But if he could just keep a straight line from the starting block to the finish line once his tiny wings started flapping, he’d be all set.

  “As the racers line up on the starting blocks, the Spinners are coming out to the track to reveal the Spin on this event,” Hairy said.

  The five purple-robed creatures pulled a cord. The curtain that ran along the track lifted, showing the surprise they had planned for the spooky-yard dash. Raw red meat sat in each lane of the track.

  “The Spinners have replaced the starting blocks with steaks!” Hairy announced.

  “Osh nosh!” Dennis blurted, freaking out. “Did he say stakes?”

  Just then the cannon fired, starting the race. Dennis shot straight up. If the finish line had been in the sky, he would have won. As it was, Mabel of the Sea Monsters easily took first place, and James of the Frankenstein’s Monsters came in second, with Kevin of the Werewolves taking third.

  “Shorry!” Dennis slurred, after he crash-landed next to the Scream Team.

  “That’s okay,” Karl told him. “It’s just bad luck that the Spinners picked the one thing you’re most scared of. We’ll do better in the next event, the high jump.”

  “The high jump is my event,” J.D. said confidently. “I’ve totally got this one!”

  The teams moved down the stadium floor to the high-jump area. This time, the Spinners’ purple curtain was right in front of the mat. It covered the two poles that held the high-jump bar.

  “There are unpredictable gusting winds tonight!” Hairy shouted. “So all the teams are really going to have to time the approach just right.”

  “No problem,” J.D. said, giving Karl a high five. “I’ll float right over the bar.”

  The five Spinners moved in. The curtain was lifted. Instead of the bar across the two upright poles, a thin rope stretched across the space.

  “Is that a clothesline?” J.D. asked, making gagging sounds and turning green. “I feel kind of . . .”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Karl watched the food in J.D.’s stomach begin to swirl and then head north. It was clear he’d eaten a banana and cereal for breakfast.

  “Looks like someone ate his Wheezies,” Alphonse said with a laugh.

  Ever since the Vampires had hypnotized J.D. during basketball season and turned him into a sheet, he’d been terrified of anything to do with laundry. Fabric softener, dryer lint, and . . . clotheslines.

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” J.D. said, “but I’ll give it a try.” As he got closer to the takeoff point, his body went flat and draped over the clothesline. He flapped there for a while as the crowd laughed and jeered.

  Alphonse snickered. “Looks like you can put the Scream Team to bed!”

  Finally, Karl trotted out and tugged on J.D. He was slightly tangled by now and Karl had to yank pretty hard. They both flew backward in a heap of fur and ghost.

  As Karl brushed himself off, he thought about the Spins so far in the Deadcathlon. The steaks. The clothesline. Was it really just bad luck that the twists seemed especially focused on things that scared the Scream Team?

  It must be a coincidence, Karl thought.

  Then Karl’s first event, the wrong jump, came up. He got that feeling of nibbling moths in his stomach. His legs felt rubbery from the pressure.

  “What is it?” J.D. asked him, noticing Karl glancing over his shoulder.

  “Something is following me!” Karl said, and he started chasing it. It was only when he heard Alphonse laughing that he realized he was chasing his own tail.

  “Get it together, Karl,” he told himself, and got ready for the most important jump of his life. Karl had his foolproof paw pattern. Left paw, right paw, right, right, right, left. If he could simply remember that, he’d be fine.

  “Bryce of the Blobs has dominated the wrong jump for the past three Deadcathlons,” Hairy announced. “Of course, Alphonse of the Werewolves is the absolute favorite and a real crowd-pleaser. But st
arting us off is . . . Larry of the Scream Team!”

  “Nosh!” Dennis shouted. “His namesh Sharl!”

  “Oh,” Hairy said, and halfheartedly tried again. “Sharl of the Scream Team!”

  Just as Karl took his place at the head of the wrong-jump runway, the Spinners shuffled over and pulled back the curtain. Instead of sand filling the pit, there were thousands of squeaky toys: chomping koala creatures and gnasher puppies with huge bug eyes.

  Uggie! Phlick! The toys peeped.

  Karl tried leaping over the pit, but the squeaking was too much. He tripped and fell snout-first into the heap of toys. He gave up fighting the urge, and started gnawing on a plastic three-headed sloth.

  Finally, Frank the referee had to waddle over and pluck Karl out of the pit.

  “Way to go, poodle,” Alphonse said to Karl, before easily jumping over the pile of toys. In fact, every other monster sailed over the pit.

  Karl turned to his friends. “Something’s fishy. Why are the Spinners picking the exact fears of the Scream Team?”

  Nobody had time to figure it out. The last event of the day was about to start, and Mike the swamp thing had to get ready.

  “Next up, the pole vault!” Hairy announced.

  The Spinner lifted the curtain, and revealed the poles that would be used in the vault.

  They looked just like fishing poles.

  “Ahhhh!” Mike screamed. “That’s the same type of rod that hooked my uncle Cedric!”

  He collapsed into a sobbing heap of scales and slime. The Scream Team helped him over to the bench as the other teams vaulted.

  Karl couldn’t believe it. So far, the Spin in each of the events had been based solely on the weaknesses of the Scream Team. He remembered the first track meet, when Dr. Neuron had been hanging out with the purple-robed Spinners in the stands. He must have been convincing them to destroy the Scream Team!

  “But why would they listen to him?” Karl asked out loud, but before he could come up with answer, Frank the Cyclops pressed a few buttons on a control pad and the stadium scoreboard read:

  ZOMBIES 8

  FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTERS 18

  WEREWOLVES 32

  SEA MONSTERS 10

  “What’s our score?” Beck asked.

  “We’re being trounced,” J.D. said. “Our score is so low, we don’t even get mentioned on the board. We have zero.”

  Zero. Zero. Zero.

  The word echoed in Karl’s mind. That was their score, and their chances of winning the Conundrum Cup and ending the curse.

  Karl woke up that night from a daymare in which he was being chased by a pack of slobbering, squeaking toys. He jumped out of bed, grabbed a bowlful of roadkill parts, and headed outside to his lair. That was what he called his tree fort in the backyard, which was where he did his best thinking.

  And Karl had a lot think about. He needed to come up with a plan to get the coaches and Patsy to the second night of the Deadcathlon, which started in twenty minutes. As he snacked on the roadkill, he looked around his lair at the posters of his hero, Wolfenstein.

  Why were the Spinners trying to destroy the Scream Team?

  If Karl could just figure that out . . . and the twenty-year-old mystery that had driven the Conundrums into early retirement and ruined their lives and their old team, he could convince them to set foot on the track at the Deadcathlon and they could deal with the Spinners.

  Then the coaches would tell Patsy to come back to the Scream Team and all would be okay again.

  Karl thought about Happy’s play. He knew something bad had happened to the Conundrums’ first team at the first Deadcathlon, that their water boy had had a lot to say, and that Wolfenstein had become a hero because of what happened. . . .

  Karl didn’t have time to put all the pieces together now. He hopped on his bike and headed to the stadium.

  The stands were as crowded the second and final night of the Deadcathlon. With his cell-phone camera ready to shoot, Karl trotted over to the five hooded Spinners gathered next to the track.

  “Here,” he said, holding out a hunk of meat. “I saved you some roadkill.”

  The tallest Spinner turned to him and reached out a hand. Karl could see what looked like a javelin poking out from under the monster’s hood.

  “Say roadkill!” Karl said. Click! He took a quick picture of himself and the Spinner, and e-mailed it to the Conundrums. He wanted them to think everyone was now great friends at the Deadcathlon. Then maybe they’d show up.

  But instead of taking the food, the Spinner snapped its fingers at Frank the referee. The ref rushed over and hustled Karl over to the waiting Scream Team.

  “What was that all about?” J.D. asked.

  “I thought maybe they’re just hungry,” Karl answered. “I can get pretty cranky when my stomach’s empty.”

  “Are you going to eat that?” Dennis asked, eyeing the roadkill. Before Karl could answer, Dennis ate the whole thing.

  “We have a real nail-biter for today’s first event,” Hairy Hairwell shouted over the loudspeakers. “It’s the 100-meter hurdle!”

  Karl and the rest of the Scream Team clapped and hooted as Bolt went to the starting line.

  “Go get ’em, Bolt!” Karl said. He had a feeling that with a name like Bolt, the Frankenstein’s monster would be a really fast sprinter.

  When all the runners were in place, the starting cannon fired again and the Spinners pulled back the curtain they had set up next to the track. Behind it was a four-piece jazz band on a small stage. Each time a monster approached a hurdle, the band would start playing.

  “Oh, that’s kind of nice!” Dennis said, clapping his mini wings in time with the music.

  But Karl knew it was a problem. Whenever the band played, Bolt stopped. His ballet-dancer foot would go up on pointe and he would do a little twirl.

  “This is a historic night, fiends and ghouls,” Hairy yelled as the race finally ended. “We have a new world record for Caroline of the Zombies . . . and Bolt of the Scream Team has run the slowest 100-meter hurdle in the history of monsterkind!”

  “Bolt sad,” Bolt said as he slunk over to weed a patch of the field. The only good news was that the Werewolves’ runner, Christine, came in fifth. So their overall lead wasn’t as huge.

  “The javelin toss is next!” Hairy announced. “The Scream Team will go first!”

  Maxwell stumbled over to an asparagus creature and tried to pick it up. “This javelin is awfully frisky!” he said. Karl guided him to the right spot and put a real javelin in his hand.

  The spectators watched eagerly as the Spinners shuffled out to the curtain at the opposite end of the javelin area. With a tug, they pulled away the curtain. At first there was stunned silence as everyone looked at the Spin.

  It was a jacket and a pair of pants on a hanger.

  Karl didn’t see the problem until he heard a spectator say, “Those colors really clash, don’t they?”

  Just as Maxwell turned, Karl rushed over and slid his wrapping farther down over his eyes. “Trust me, Maxwell, don’t look!” Karl warned.

  Maxwell couldn’t resist. He moved his wrapping and his eyes locked on the pants and the jacket. “Ahh!” Maxwell shouted. “That color combination is hideous! I need to go lie down!”

  The mummy stumbled over to the Scream Team bench and collapsed.

  The hammer-toe event was next. This time, the Spin required that all monsters use their own toes. Eric the blob, of course, was lacking in that department. He fouled out on his first try.

  When the Werewolves’ Ryan came in third in the event, Hairy Hairwell announced, “This puts us in an exciting situation! The Monster Relay is worth fifty points. The winner of the relay will actually walk away the winner of the entire Deadcathlon, despite the Conu
ndrum Cup Curse!”

  J.D. cringed, waiting for something bad to happen. And this time, Karl cringed, too.

  “Hey there, Scream Team buddies!” Virgil Conundrum said.

  Dennis shrieked and shot up into the air, where he ricocheted around the stadium lights like a pinball. Karl turned to see the Conundrums behind them. They were standing on stilts. Karl figured it was because they were scared to actually set foot on the track at the Deadcathlon.

  “You’re here!” Karl said happily.

  Wyatt nodded. “Just don’t tell Virgil I’m here if you see him. He’s been following me everywhere!”

  “Where’s the zombie in that photo you sent, Karl?” Virgil asked. “I have to talk to him!”

  “Why?” Karl asked. There wasn’t much time before the start of the relay race.

  Wyatt started to say, “That picture is why I’m here at—” when Dennis fell out of the sky and struck the Conundrums, toppling them off their stilts and onto the track.

  Screams of panic erupted around the stadium.

  “The Conundrums have set foot onto the track at the Deadcathlon!” Hairy screeched over the speakers. “Run for your lives or your undeaths!”

  The coaches tried to balance up on their toes as if that would be better than their full feet on the track. For a split second, they teetered, and then fell over sideways, landing directly on top of the Spinner who had snapped his fingers at Frank in front of Karl.

  Umph! They all hit the ground together.

  The silence was filled by a coughing sound. A piece of rotten wood freed itself from inside the Spinner’s purple robes. It rolled away down the track and rattled to a halt in front of the stands.

  “What is that?” a spiderbot in the bleachers asked.