#2 Zombie Cows! (Agent Amelia)

by Michael Broad

  American edition published in 2011 by Darby Creek,

  a division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  Copyright © 2007 by Michael Broad

  First published in 2007 by Andersen Press Limited,

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

  www.andersenpress.co.uk www.michaelbroad.co.uk

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

  Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Broad, Michael.

  Zombie cows! / written and illustrated by Michael Broad. — 1st American ed.

  v. cm. — (Agent Amelia, #2)

  Summary: Amelia, a young secret agent, investigates some robotic animals, an enchanting music teacher, and a pair of remarkably beautiful twin bakers with a dastardly plot, all while avoiding her nemesis, Trudy Hart.

  Contents: The case of the zombie cows — The case of the perilous pipe — The case of the creepy cakes.

  ISBN: 978–0–7613–8057–3 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  [1. Spies—Fiction. 2. Robots—Fiction. 3. Music teachers—Fiction.

  4. Teachers—Fiction. 5. Bakers and bakeries—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B780834Zom 2011

  [E]—dc22 2011001089

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 7/15/11

  eISBN: 978-0-7613-8067-2 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3034-1 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3033-4 (mobi)

  The Case of the Zombie Cows

  The Case of the Perilous Pipe

  The Case of the Creepy Cakes

  I’M AMELIA KIDD and I’m a secret agent.

  Well, I’m not actually a secret agent. I don’t work for the government or anything. But I’ve saved the world loads of times from evil geniuses and criminal masterminds. There are loads of them around if you know what to look for.

  I’m really good at disguises. I make my own gadgets (which sometimes work), and I’m used to improvising in sticky situations—which you have to do all the time when you’re a secret agent.

  These are my Secret Agent Case Files.

  The Case of the

  Zombie Cows

  During the holidays, when Mom’s not working, we go out for the day. Usually we try to go somewhere different. Most times we end up somewhere really cool, but other times we end up somewhere not so cool.

  This time Mom decided on the local petting zoo.Which is cool if you’re really young—but not so cool if you’re a secret agent who has definitely grown out of fluffy bunny rabbits.

  I admit I was sulking when we arrived. I was huffing and puffing as we made our way down the gravel path toward the farmyard. Unfortunately, Mom saw this as an opportunity for a bit of interrogation.

  “Amelia, why, oh why, do you insist on dragging that big heavy bag everywhere we go?” she said, jabbing a finger at my backpack. “Just what do you think you’ll need?”

  “Stuff,” I said, eyeing her carefully over the top of my sunglasses.

  Mom eyed me back.

  Sometimes saying “stuff ” will cover it and Mom won’t bother to check what’s inside my backpack. But my mom is pretty smart, and every so often, curiosity gets the better of her.

  “What kind of stuff exactly?” she asked.

  “Drawing stuff,” I said innocently. “So I can draw the fluffy bunny rabbits.”

  Mom immediately raised a suspicious eyebrow. I’d obviously gone too far with the fluffy bunny rabbits. Now I was going to have to prove it or bring unwanted attention to my secret-agent activities.

  With the biggest sigh I could manage, I heaved off my backpack. I unzipped the flap, pulled out a drawing book and a handful of pencils, and waved them in the air. Of course the rest of my bag was stuffed with secret-agent stuff, but in the last week I’d seen Mom grow more curious about my backpack and had packed the book and pencils just in case.

  You have to think ahead when you’re a secret agent.

  “I didn’t need to see them,” Mom shrugged innocently.“I was just making conversation.”

  As I suspected, the petting zoo wasn’t very interesting.

  The animals were cute, but they were all small and fluffy. I couldn’t really see them anyway because there were lots of other kids crowding around—kids that were at least half my age!

  To make matters worse, Mom bumped into an old friend and was chatting for ages. I slunk away to look for some bigger, more grown-up animals like horses or elephants. OK, I didn’t really expect to find an elephant, but it was a farm, so there could be a horse.

  I was in luck—as soon as I turned the corner,climbed a couple of fences, and negotiated my way through some bushes, I eventually found the stables. But my luck quickly ran out as very loud voice stopped me in my tracks.

  “AMELIA KIDD! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

  At first I thought Mom had seen me sneaking off, followed me, and planned to march me back to the fluffy bunny rabbits. But then I realized the voice was much too high-pitched and whiny—which could mean only one other person.

  I turned around slowly to see Trudy Hart. She was storming across the courtyard in riding coat, boots, and hat, and waving her crop at me. Trudy is in my class at school, and we don’t get along. In fact, we’re sworn enemies.

  “Well?” she demanded, eyeing me up and down with her nose high in the air.

  Because she took me by surprise, I was about to explain that I was bored with the petting zoo and was looking for something more interesting to pet. But then I thought of a better response.

  “It’s none of your business!” I yelled.

  “My daddy owns these stables, so I think it is my business!” she snapped.

  “Oh,” I said, lowering my voice and forcing my mouth into a fake smile.“I wasn’t doing any harm. I just wanted to see the horses.”

  “They’re not rocking horses. They’re intelligent animals, and I forbid you from going anywhere near them!” Trudy sneered and thrust her riding crop in the direction of a nearby field. “I will allow you to see the cows, though. They’re awfully stupid, so you’ll probably find you have a lot in common!”

  I was about to raise my voice again when a short, thin man appeared from one of the stables. My secret-agent senses immediately kicked in when I noticed the man was carrying a shiny black briefcase!

  Evil geniuses and criminal masterminds often carry briefcases to hold their fiendish plans for world domination. That doesn’t mean everyone who has a briefcase is planning to take over the world, but this man was obviously just a stable hand, which made it very suspicious.

  “Lightning is ready for you, Miss Trudy,” he said.

  The man caught me peering at him over my sunglasses. He narrowed his eyes, making him look like an angry gnome.“Is everything OK, Miss Trudy?” he added cautiously.

  “Yes, thank you,Albert,” said Trudy, without looking around.“One of those dreadful petting-zoo people got lost again. I said she could go and gawk at the cows.”

  “But the cows aren’t really part of—” Albert began, but Trudy cut him off.

  “I said she could go and gawk at the cows,” Trudy repeated—pulling out her cell phone and flicking it open.“
Is there going to be a problem, Albert?”

  “No, Miss,” he said hurriedly. “No problem at all.”

  Trudy snapped her phone shut and grinned at me.

  “Off you go then,” she said.“If I catch you near the stables again, I’ll have Albert run you off with his pitchfork. Do you understand?”

  I wasn’t listening anymore. I was watching Albert shuffling away. He looked very suspicious. Once he was out of sight, I turned my attention back to Trudy. She was snorting through her nostrils at being made to wait.

  “Whatever,” I sighed and casually strolled away.

  I made my way toward the cow field and then hid behind the wall until Trudy finally trotted off on her horse. I planned to double back and carry out some stable surveillance. But first, I needed a disguise.

  Ducking into the empty cattle shed, I rummaged through my backpack.

  Making room for the sketchbook and pencil decoy meant I didn’t have many disguise options. I had to make do with a plastic nose, mustache and glasses (all in one), and an old cap.A glance in my mirror told me none of my flowery dresses would go with the mustache, but after a bit of snooping, I found an old brown coat hanging in the shed.

  Pulling the coat on over my backpack to give myself a bit of a hunch, I stepped back into the yard and glanced around. I was about to head back for the stables when I heard a very strange sound coming from the field.

  A small herd of cows were ambling awkwardly toward me, but there was something very odd about the way they moved, something creepy and clunky, like zombie cows.

  The cows stopped suddenly when they reached the fence and peered at me through lifeless eyes. I’d never seen a cow up close before, but I was pretty sure they didn’t tick—and these cows were definitely ticking!

  At first I thought they might be time bombs made to look like cows, but that didn’t really make sense. So I stood up on the fence, leaned over, and tapped one firmly on the head. It was rock hard and echoed like a drum. On closer inspection, I found that one of the ears was not an ear at all but a large metal key!

  Slipping through the fence, I gave the cow a quick once-over.

  After a bit of expert tapping and knocking and banging, a small door clicked open in the cow’s belly. Inside, I found a bunch of gears and wheels and pulleys whirring around.This definitely explained the ticking.

  Slamming the door, I suddenly noticed that none of the clockwork cows actually had a tail. Instead, they each had a radio-controlled antenna with a tiny red light flashing at the end!

  “Hmmm?” I thought to myself.

  An antenna meant they were not just clockwork cattle that roamed the fields until their keys wound down. That would be weird enough. No, these cows were actually being controlled by someone from a distance!

  Slowly and discreetly I pulled out my mirror, held it up, and scanned the scene behind me. There in the stable courtyard was Albert the shifty stable hand! He was watching me closely while tapping away frantically inside his briefcase.

  Suddenly all the cows clicked their heads in my direction.

  “MOOOOO!” they boomed together and then started making their way forward again. Dropping the mirror, I leaped back over the fence just as the cows crashed through it!

  In the courtyard,Albert had vanished around the back of the stables, so I ran after him as fast as my disguise would allow. Luckily, I was faster than the cows, who were very slow and ambled along like zombies.

  Tucked away behind the stables, I found a chicken run.Albert was standing behind the hutch with his briefcase propped up against the roof. I could now see that it had an antenna of its own and was full of dials and buttons and switches.

  When he saw me, he gave an evil-genius smile and pressed one of the buttons dramatically.

  Cluck-click-click!

  Cluck-click-click!

  With a whirring of tiny gears and wheels and pulleys, every chicken in the yard stopped acting like a chicken and snapped its head in my direction. They flapped their wings angrily and began bobbing up and down like demented pogo sticks.

  Glancing back around the stable, I could see the herd of cows were still bumbling across the yard. It wasn’t exactly a stampede, so I turned my attention back to the chickens.

  The bobbing seemed to be powering up the springs in their legs because one bird squatted down, a click sounded, and then it launched itself straight at me, snapping its beak angrily.

  Quick as a flash, I grabbed a nearby shovel. I smacked the ball of flapping metal before it could peck my plastic nose off. I’m quite good at tennis so it shot across the yard like a rocket, landing with a massive

  The pecking projectiles whizzed through the air one after another. I fended them off with my shovel.As the last of the clockwork chickens squatted, clicked, and launched, I turned sideways and whacked it in the direction of a very angry Albert.

  The tin torpedo sailed through the air and crashed into the briefcase, knocking Albert off his feet. The controls slid down the roof of the chicken coop. Albert lunged forward, but I was quicker and managed to snatch the briefcase.

  “Give that back!” Albert growled, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.

  I knew Albert was short, but he was a lot shorter than I’d realized. In fact, he was so short that I could keep the briefcase from his reach just by holding it up in the air.Albert looked even more like an angry gnome jumping up and down trying to grab the briefcase.

  Eventually the little man tired himself out.

  “Now, why don’t you start by telling me what you’re up to?” I demanded.

  Because I was taller, I felt like a grown-up dealing with a naughty child. “Are you planning to take over the world?”

  “Huh?” said Albert. He seemed genuinely surprised.“Of course not. . . .”

  “Then what?” I said, stepping back and peering inside the briefcase.

  “I’m planning to take over the horse racing world!” he stated proudly.

  “On a metal chicken?” I said. I glanced back at the cows, who were now ambling around the corner and looking much more funny than scary. “Or on one of those?” I added with a smirk.

  “Oh, those are just experiments,” Albert said, shaking his head. “Now that I’ve perfected my mechanical-animal technology, there isn’t a single horse that can beat Lightning.”

  “Lightning?” I gasped.“Trudy Hart’s horse?”

  “Lightning belongs to me!” snapped Albert.“That little brat thinks she owns everything just because her father owns the stables. But he’s mine—I made every gear and spring.”

  “Lightning isn’t even a real horse?” I said. I was a little bit impressed.

  “No, in fact he’s better than a real horse!” said Albert proudly.

  Hearing the familiar tick-tick-ticking, I noticed that the cows had caught up with me. I scanned the control board inside the briefcase for the Stop button.

  It wasn’t obvious what any of the buttons did, but in the center was a big red one. Criminal masterminds and evil geniuses love big red buttons in briefcases. The buttons usually mean something bad, like an explosion or an ejector seat or something like that. But seeing as though Albert wasn’t technically trying to take over the world, I guessed that the big red button just meant “stop.”

  So I pressed it.

  That was when lots of things happened all at once.

  Albert leaped forward yelling,

  The slow stampede of clockwork cows ground to a halt. Suddenly, each one exploded in a mass of springs and gears and little brass wheels.

  Moments later, there was a very loud shriek. It came from the courtyard on the other side of the stables. Even in all the chaos, I knew it belonged to Trudy Hart, because I’ve heard her shrieking loads of times before.

  “What have you done?” Albert groaned, snatching the smoking briefcase and clutching it to his chest.

  “Er, I’m not sure,” I said awkwardly. “What have I done?”

  “That was the Self-Destruct bu
tton,” Albert sobbed, sinking helplessly to his knees.“It’s linked to all the mechanical animals and was there only for an emergency! It was never supposed to be pressed!”

  “Oh,” I said feebly.“Sorry.”

  I did feel bad for breaking Albert’s animals, but then I decided it was probably best to put an end to his plot. If he’d succeeded in taking over the racing world, he would most likely have turned his attention to the rest of the world.

  It’s best to nip these things in the bud.

  Leaving Albert with his briefcase, I decided to make my way back toward the petting zoo. Packing my disguise away, I draped the brown coat over the fence and stepped back through the stables.

  In the middle of the courtyard sat a heap of machinery, springs, and metal horse parts. In the center of the mechanical mess sat Trudy. She was still perched in the saddle, holding onto the reins, angrily tapping the hide with her riding crop.

  “Giddy up!” she demanded, as the metal torso creaked back and forth.

  “Nice rocking horse,” I said, slipping my sunglasses on with a smile.

  The Case of the

  Perilous Pipe

  “…So if you think about it, another day really won’t make any difference,” I pleaded. I was standing outside the school gates with my hands clasped hopefully. “I’m already a week behind.”