#2 Zombie Cows! (Agent Amelia)

by Michael Broad

  Mom’s wide eyes grew a little wider when confronted with the Beauty Sisters. For a moment she seemed unable to speak at all.

  “Goodness me,” she gasped eventually. “You’re both, er. . .”

  “Beautiful?” the sisters chimed together.“Yes, we know.”

  “Um, yes!” Mom stammered. “That’s exactly what I was about to say!”

  “We used to be supermodels, you know,” the pair stated proudly.

  While the grown-ups made small talk, I scanned the shop for signs of criminal activity. But aside from the size of the cakes, there was nothing out of the ordinary, except for the peculiar-looking twins.

  “And however do you both stay so slim?” Mom laughed. “If I had a shop like this, I’d be tempted to eat cake all day long,” she added and then laughed some more.

  The twins were not laughing at Mom’s joke. In fact, they’d stopped smiling altogether.Their identical faces suddenly wore the same grave expression.

  “We never eat the cakes,” they hissed.The sisters hurried back behind the counter and busied themselves by working on a display of giant apple fritters.

  “Oh,” said Mom, to fill the awkward silence.

  While Mom tried to work out what she’d said wrong, I crept over to the counter.Tipping my sunglasses, I watched as the angry twins whispered to each other while frantically tying pink bows around bags of sweets.

  Suddenly two pairs of eyes glared in my direction.

  “What do you want, little girl?” they said in unison.

  “Two donuts, please!” I said and did my best innocent smile.

  Back home, I eyed the bag of donuts on the kitchen counter. They did look and smell delicious, but I didn’t plan on Mom or me eating them.The Beauty Sisters were up to something. They were probably trying to take over the world. I was certain the baked goods were part of the plan.

  I studied the contents of the paper bag and wondered what an evil genius or a criminal mastermind could possibly do with a donut. The answer seemed pretty obvious to me.

  Holding the bag at arm’s length, I gripped each donut through the paper. I began a slow, careful squeeze. Then, with my face still tense because I half-expected the donuts to explode, I peered into the bag. I was a bit disappointed to see two saggy donuts and a bag full of jelly filling.

  I dipped my finger in the sticky red goo and held it up to my nose. It smelled OK, but I still didn’t want to eat it. Instead, I pulled out my magnifying glass and moved to the window for a closer look.

  It was then that something strange happened: as the heat from the sun intensified through the magnifying glass, the jam started bubbling and expanding right before my eyes!

  “Heat!” I gasped.

  I flicked the red blob away, grabbed the donut bag, and plopped it on the hot radiator.The jam in the bag immediately began to swell. It strained at the paper bag.Then it rose up like a fizzy can of soda.Thinking fast, I ran to the trash. I threw the whole thing in just as the paper burst. The red mess spilled everywhere.

  “What on earth?” yelled Mom, appearing in the doorway.

  “Er, I dropped our donuts in the trash. . . accidentally,” I stammered, although given more time, I would definitely have come up with a better excuse.

  Mom gazed at the red mess in the trash.

  “And they look like really gooey ones too,” she sighed.

  “I’ll run back to the shop!” I said quickly. “My treat!” And before Mom could answer, I grabbed my backpack and bolted for the door.

  Around the corner, I stopped to check my supplies.Without time to prepare, I wasn’t sure what disguises I’d packed.All I could find was a beret and a flowery scarf that I’d collected because I might need to look like a French lady one day.

  It was not ideal, but it would have to do.

  Walking slowly past the window of the cake shop, I spied the Beauty Sisters.They were busy talking to customers at the counter. I took the chance to slip into the shop. Once inside, I edged my way quietly along the wall. I pretended to browse the shelves, while secretly heading for a curtain at the back.

  With one last glance to make sure the twins were still distracted, I was about to duck through the curtain when a terrifying noise stopped me in my tracks.

  “BUT I WANT IT NOOOOOW!” screamed a strangely familiar voice.

  I froze to the spot.

  Pulling my beret down and my scarf up, I turned my head again slowly.The other customers in the shop were actually my archenemy, Trudy Hart, and her tired-looking parents.

  Trudy is in my class at school, but we don’t get along. She’s very spoiled and used to getting her way. Today, that meant screaming and stamping her foot in the middle of the shop while her parents tried to calm her down.

  Typical! I thought.

  Then I realized that because Trudy was having a tantrum, everyone’s attention was on her. No one was looking at me. So I shrugged my shoulders and stepped casually through the curtain.

  I’d never seen the back of a bakery before. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I definitely didn’t expect to find what I found.The back of The Beauty Sisters’ Cake Emporium looked exactly like a mad scientist’s laboratory!

  There were test tubes and lightning rods and smoking beakers. Among all the complicated scientific equipment were bags of sugar, sacks of flour, cans of cream, and jars of jam. There was also a light frost covering everything because the room was as cold as a freezer.

  Hmmm? I thought, rubbing my arms for warmth.

  My plan to get into the back of the shop didn’t really cover what I would do once I got there. I decided to snoop around a bit. I hoped to discover exactly what the Beauty Sisters were plotting.

  Then I’d find a way to stop them.

  I could hear Trudy still screaming her demands in the shop. I knew she would continue to scream until she got her own way. I began a thorough search of the weird cake laboratory.

  I started with the diagrams on the wall.

  As far as I could tell from the drawings, the twins were filling their cakes with specially modified fillings that would instantly make people gain weight.Very odd. I’d foiled some strange attempts to take over the world before, but this was definitely one of the strangest.

  I also worked out from the diagrams that body heat made the fillings swell.This explained why my tampering with the donuts had set off the weird expanding jelly. Since bodies aren’t as hot as radiators, people probably wouldn’t explode.

  They would just get very, very big!

  Scattered around the room were large crates filled with cakes and other treats, but it was so cold in the lab, I decided they were probably harmless so long as I didn’t eat them or warm them up.Then I noticed a table in the middle of the room with a large cloth draped over it.

  There was no way of knowing what was underneath. It could have been a booby trap, so I pulled out my extendable grabber-hand gadget (it’s basically a hand on a stick). I carefully removed the cloth.

  Underneath the cloth was the biggest layer cake I’d ever seen! It was about half my size and stuffed to bursting with filling and frosting.Then I peered down at the cake and gasped out loud.

  The words “Happy Birthday Trudy” glared back at me in bright pink frosting!

  I could have kicked myself for not making the connection earlier.

  Trudy had made a big fuss all week at school about her birthday party. She even held a meeting in the playground where the exclusive party invitations were handed out. She also provided a typed list of acceptable birthday presents.

  Needless to say, I didn’t get an invitation. Now I was staring at her birthday cake.

  Suddenly everything went eerily silent. I realized the sound of Trudy screaming and stamping had stopped. This could mean only one thing. Either Trudy had just got her way, or she’d left the shop quietly without getting her way.

  I knew Trudy well enough to know which was most likely and turned around to find two thin figures looming in the doorway!r />
  “Er. . . bonjour!” I said quickly, in my best French accent. “Croissants?” I added hopefully, having just used up all the French words I knew.

  The twins eyed me up and down and then scuttled forward.

  “You’re not French,” said the twin on the left.

  “You’re not chic enough,” added the twin on the right.

  I backed away slowly and tried to think fast.

  One sure way to buy time with criminal masterminds is to get them ranting about their plans for world domination. Most of them can’t resist telling you how clever they think they are.

  “You won’t get away with it!” I said, which is usually a good trigger.

  The twins stopped and frowned at each other.The pair had seen right through my disguise so perhaps they were too smart to fall for the rant trigger. Having backed myself into the corner of the room, I could only wait and hold my breath.

  “We WILL get away with it!” they yelled in unison.“Once the world gets a taste of our delicious cakes, they’ll all puff up like marshmallows, and soon EVERYONE will be a big roly-poly dumpling. . . .”

  While the Beauty Sisters continued to rant, I looked around frantically.The twins were blocking the door, so there was no way out. I had to cause a diversion to get past them.

  My eyes fell on the thermostat mounted on the wall beside me.

  “Aha!” I said to myself, because if I said it out loud it would completely give the plan away.Aiming carefully, I flicked the lever on my extendable grabber-hand and spun the dial from “Arctic” to “Tropical.” I tucked the gadget away again in the blink of an eye.

  “And when everyone else is waddling around like great big balloons,WE will be the only THIN ones.Then the fashion world will have no choice but to make us supermodels again!” concluded the Beauty Sisters.

  “Not bad,” I said. I said it out loud because I needed to buy more time. “Except for one tiny flaw,” I added, casually loosening my scarf because the room was already heating up.

  “What flaw?” asked the twins suspiciously.“Our plan is flawless, like us!”

  “You didn’t count on me stopping you!” I said firmly.

  Suddenly a cream-filled donut exploded in the corner of the room, splurting its filling right across the ceiling. It was followed by another and another.Then whole trays of donuts and cupcakes started blowing up all over the place.

  The twins gripped each other and shrieked with each explosion. I wrapped myself in the cloth and headed for the door, ducking and diving through the crossfire of flying fillings.

  I was halfway to freedom when the explosions suddenly stopped. All that remained was the foaming fillings, flowing from the trays.

  The angry twins lunged forward, but I ducked behind the table in the middle of the room.

  Now the only thing that stood between the twins and me was the giant layer cake. Glancing down, I saw that it was already beginning to throb. The Beauty Sisters had seen it too because they were backing away.

  Thinking on my feet, I grabbed the giant cake, heaved it above my head and took off after them. This was difficult because the cake was really heavy. Then as soon as I was close enough, I threw the cake as hard as I could.

  I watched in slow motion as the cake sailed through the air, but the twins were quick and managed to duck down just in time.The giant cake flew over their heads, through the curtain, and out into the shop.

  The explosion made the curtain flap inward, and through the gap, I saw a Trudy-shaped tower of frosting with sponge cake on top.

  This was quickly followed by an ear-piercing squeal that made the windows rattle.

  Trudy did look funny covered in cake, but there was no time to enjoy it.The twins had picked themselves up.They now looked even meaner than before. I glanced around frantically and grabbed the nearest things to hand.

  Two squeezy bags of bright pink frosting!

  With an expert flick of my wrists, I cocked the frosting bags and aimed them steadily at the twins.The Beauty Sisters immediately put their hands up in surrender.This was good because that’s when Trudy’s parents appeared through the curtain.They were eager to know why their daughter was buried under a giant cake.

  When you’re a secret agent, you can’t hang around and take credit for saving the world. Because all the evidence was there in the cake lab, I quickly armed Mr. and Mrs. Hart with the frosting bags and made my getaway.

  I couldn’t risk revealing my identity as I passed the creamy, jammy mountain in the middle of the shop. But as two furious eyes peered out at me, I couldn’t resist a quick comment either.

  “Bonjour, croissant!” I said, in my best French accent, and then I jogged home.