Rise of ZomBert Read online

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a cold fall night in the town of Lambert, and the moon was full. The only sounds were the buzzing of the streetlamps and the scattering of dead leaves across the windy, empty streets . . . and, in a lab on the outskirts of town, the creak of a cage door.

  A shadowy figure emerged from that cage. Bloodied and frail, he slunk through the room, sniffing the air. He would have to be quick; the assistant on duty had left the lab and could be back at any moment. The inhabitants of the other cages looked on encouragingly.

  I’ll come back for you, he seemed to tell them. I promise.

  As he scrambled away through an air duct, those who remained behind were silent. They wanted to give at least one of their number the best chance of escape.

  The shadowy figure made his way through the maze of the air-duct system, sniffing all the way, until he found where it vented to the outside. Using his remaining energy, he jumped. The air outside was crisp and cold, not stale like it was in the lab, and he let it fill his lungs. He assessed the fence, which he thought he’d need to scale, but then he saw the hole. It was a good-size hole, so he’d have no problem getting through.

  The problem was that he was weak. So weak. He hadn’t eaten in a couple of days; he couldn’t stomach the food they’d been giving him, which was too soft and smelled wrong and didn’t have any crunchy bones or pulsing blood in it. Food always tasted better when you caught it and killed it yourself, and it had been a long time since he’d been able to hunt the way he liked. Too long. But he needed energy now.

  He saw the dumpster, which was too tall for him to jump into in his condition. But then he saw the barrel. He sniffed and smelled something that just might be food. He had no energy left to jump, so all he could do was let himself fall, and then land — amid nothing but empty cans and bottles and other trash. He had failed, he thought. And then he passed out.

  Eventually, the lab assistant returned and finished the remainder of his shift. The sun had begun to rise over Lambert, and the empty cage marked Y-91 wouldn’t be noticed until later that morning.

  Everybody say frittata!” my dad said.

  “ITTATA!” yelled Emmett.

  “ITTATA! ITTATA!” yelled Ezra, clapping his hands.

  Dad circled around the table, taking video of the twins with his phone. I covered my face.

  “Come on, Mellie,” he said. “Don’t you want to be in this one? I’m thinking of calling it ‘Sunday Fun-Day Breakfast.’”

  I shook my head. I knew Mom and Dad wanted me to want to participate; after all, their blog was called Family, Food, and Fun.

  “Mellie, don’t touch the bacon yet,” my mother said.

  “But I’m hungry,” I said. I groaned and held my stomach for maximum effect.

  “Well, I’m still trying to get a photo,” Mom said, adjusting her camera lens. “This light just isn’t right.”

  “Maybe you need the reflector,” my father suggested.

  “Good idea!” Mom said.

  As she ran off to get it, my father finally sat down.

  “So,” he said. “Any big plans for today?”

  “Danny and I are going to hang out,” I said. “And I still need to pick a topic for my presentation.”

  We were studying organisms at school, and everyone in my class was supposed to do an oral report on a living thing.

  “Do you have any ideas yet?” my father asked.

  “I have a whole list,” I said, pulling it out of the pocket of my favorite coveralls, where I’d put it so I could share it with Danny later. “Garden slug, millipede, flying squirrel, sea urchin, vampire bat, Portuguese man-of-war, Komodo dragon, duck-billed platypus . . .”

  “That’s quite a menagerie,” my father said.

  “I want to pick something unique,” I explained.

  “Unique, like you,” my father said, ruffling my hair.

  “You-neek!” shouted Emmett.

  “Neek! Neek!” shouted Ezra.

  My father grabbed his phone, hit video, and pointed it at the twins. “Ooh, can you two say that again?” he asked.

  “Time to photograph some bacon!” my mother said, returning with the reflector.

  Unfortunately, my parents seemed more interested in cooking and photographing our food than actually eating it, which meant I hadn’t had a hot meal in more than two years. They started blogging when they were trying to have another baby, and then they really got into it when they adopted the twins. Dad used to be a chef and Mom used to be a freelance writer, but when the blog took off, they quit their jobs. Now this was all they did, full-time.

  That morning, I managed to eat a few bites of cold frittata and gulp down my orange juice.

  “May I be excused?” I asked.

  But my parents were too busy trying to get Emmett and Ezra to sing a song about bacon and eggs. It was a song they used to sing to me at breakfast, before the twins came along. I put my plate in the dishwasher and headed for the door.

  “I’m going to meet Danny!” I shouted. As if anyone really cared.

  Soon after that, I was lying in a pool of blood.

  Okay, actually, it was fake blood — Danny makes it himself using his own special recipe. It’s supposed to be edible, but it grosses me out too much to taste it. And I was lying near it more than in it, since it grosses me out too much to touch it. Danny says I should get used to it, since I want to be a scientist, but I have plenty of time to be grossed out before that happens.

  I suppose you could say we were trespassing. But when Danny and I found a hole in the back fence at the YummCo Foods factory, we took it as an invitation. Danny was the one who insisted on filming there. I thought the town cemetery or the woods behind my house would be better settings for a horror movie, but since we’d found the hole in the fence a few months before, Danny had been obsessed with filming at the factory. He thought it would make a great horror movie set, since it’s at the edge of town and is big and white with tiny windows — the kind of place where evil scientists might conduct secret experiments. And set into the hill above the factory is the old mansion where Stuart Yumm, the CEO of YummCo, lives. Danny is obsessed with horror movies, and he’s always “scouting for locations,” as he puts it. He even has his own online channel called Hurlvision, though he doesn’t have too many viewers. Danny said it takes time to build up a fan base.

  Anyway, I was lying on the pavement of the loading dock behind a dumpster; we made sure to position me so Danny could get some good footage without anyone seeing us. As Danny filmed, YummCo Foods workers in their trademark brown-and-green uniforms were loading boxes and yelling to one another from inside and outside the factory.

  “Your mask is crooked,” Danny said.

  This was the only way I’d agreed to be on camera — if I could cover my face. Danny made the mask out of papier-mâché and painted it to look like a ghoul, with red eyes and fangs. That’s the name of the movie he was making: Gone Ghoul.

  It was just as I was trying to adjust the mask that I heard the noise.

  “Mrow.”

  “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “What?” Danny said.

  I thought it was my own stomach, seeing as it was squeezed between the dumpster and the brick wall of the factory. Also, it was almost lunchti
me. Then I heard it again.

  “Mrow.”

  “I think it’s coming from inside,” I said. “Help me with this.”

  Danny and I lifted the dumpster lid.

  “Gaah!” he said. All we saw and smelled was garbage. We tried to let go of the lid gently, but it still hit the dumpster with a CLANG.

  We looked around to see if anyone noticed, but no one did. The YummCo workers were still loading and unloading, like robots.

  “Mroooooooow.”

  “Okay, now I hear it,” Danny admitted.

  “It’s not coming from the dumpster,” I said. It was coming from a big blue recycling barrel next to the dumpster. I looked inside.

  At first, I just saw two pale-yellow eyes. I squinted and leaned in, and the eyes became part of a head, and the head became part of a cat. And it wasn’t just any cat.

  It was the ugliest cat I’d ever seen.

  Danny peered down into the barrel, too. “What is that?” he asked.

  “It’s a cat,” I said. “I think.”

  “Mroooow.”

  “Well, it sounds like a cat,” Danny said. “What’s it doing here?”

  “Do you want to ask him?” I said. Danny made a face.

  “MROOOOOOOOOW.”

  There was something about the cat’s crying that really got to me. It’s like it needed me. I stretched out my arms.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Danny warned. “You’re not supposed to touch stray animals. That cat could have rabies.”

  “Relax,” I said. “It’s harmless. And wow . . . skinny.”

  Skinny was an understatement. The cat was just skin and bones. I lifted him up out of the barrel to get a better look. It was even worse in the sunlight. He (with a quick look, I could tell it was a he) was missing a lot of the fur on his stomach and legs, and the fur that remained was matted and dull. He had some dried blood on what was left of his ear, probably from a recent catfight. And he smelled almost as bad as the dumpster.

  “Yuck,” Danny said.

  But as soon as I pulled the cat out of the recycling barrel, he started purring. He put a paw on either side of my neck and leaned his head on my chest. It was like he was trying to hug me. If it wasn’t for the smell, I would have tried to hug him back.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “We need to get you cleaned up.”

  “So . . . wait. You’re going to keep this thing?” Danny asked.

  “This ‘thing’ is a cat. And yes, I’m going to keep him,” I said.

  Danny scoffed. “What are you going to name him? Fleabag? Mr. Bones? Stinky?”

  I looked at the blue barrel. On the outside, it said:

  PROPERTY OF

  TOWN OF

  LAMBERT

  “Bert,” I decided, looking into the cat’s yellow eyes. “Your name will be Bert.”

  And then I zipped Bert into my hoodie, got on my bike, and started pedaling. Eventually, Danny caught up.

  It was Kari who noticed the empty cage, when she took inventory at the beginning of her shift that morning.

  “Huh,” Greg said, jiggling the latch. “I guess a screw was loose.”

  “When I lock the cages, I always double-check,” Kari informed him. She tried to look serious as she said it, but inside, she was giddy. She’d been waiting and hoping for Greg to make a mistake since he was hired a few months ago. When he didn’t, she’d decided to take matters (and a screwdriver) into her own hands. Now that promotion to senior lab assistant would be hers, she just knew it.

  Greg and the lab animals looked on as Kari put on gloves and examined the interior of the cage.

  “Looks like it ripped off its tracking tag, too. And part of his ear along with it,” she said.

  “Ugh,” Greg said. “How much trouble do you think I’m in?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Kari said. She took off her gloves with a snap and tossed them into the trash. “You need to tell the Big Boss.”

  At the sound of the Big Boss’s name, the animals began whimpering and pawing at their cages.

  “The B-Big Boss?” Greg said.

  “Don’t worry,” Kari said, smiling. “I’ll go with you. We lab assistants need to stick together, right?”

  “We can’t have Y-91 out in the world!” the Big Boss bellowed. “We have no idea what it’s capable of!”

  “I’ve searched everywhere in the lab,” said Kari. “No sign of it. And without its tracking tag, we’re at a loss.”

  “Of course, I take full responsibility,” Greg noted, hanging his head. Kari was surprised he didn’t mention the faulty latch; she definitely would have.

  “I should fire you,” the Big Boss harrumphed. “But I admire those who take responsibility for their mistakes. As long as they’re willing to make it right.”

  “I am,” said Greg. “I’ll do anything.”

  What? If Kari had screwed up like this, she knew she’d have been fired. But Greg got to stay? Getting rid of him was going to be harder than she expected.

  “I’m surprised Y-91 had the strength to escape. Its stats had dropped considerably over the past few days,” Kari said, showing the Big Boss the latest test results. “Actually, I thought it’d be a goner this morning when I checked its cage.”

  “You’re responsible for finding it,” the Big Boss said, pointing a finger at Greg, then looking at Kari. “But you’re in charge.”

  Kari nodded. She was in charge. She liked the sound of that.

  “I’ll get a hazmat team together to search the grounds,” she said. “If we don’t find it, we’ll come up with a new plan.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t let you down,” said Greg.

  “You won’t let me down again,” the Big Boss growled.

  When we got Bert back to my house, the first thing we did was to give him a bath in the backyard. We filled up my brothers’ plastic wading pool with water from the hose, and I used some of my mom’s fancy shampoo, which smells like roses.

  You’d think it would be hard to bathe a cat — from what I’ve heard, they don’t like water the way dogs do. But Bert stayed perfectly relaxed.

  “He looks almost limp,” Danny noted.

  “I bet he’s just miserable from being so dirty and stinky,” I said. “This bath is probably a big relief.”

  “Are your parents going to let you keep him?” Danny asked as we dried Bert with a towel.

  “Probably not,” I said. “Which is why I’m not going to tell them about him.”

  “You won’t get away with that for long,” Danny said.

  “Longer than you’d think,” I said. “My parents aren’t like your mom. Unless it’s about Family, Food, and Fun, they don’t notice anything. Or anyone.”

  “That’s true,” Danny said.

  We unwrapped Bert from the towel and took a look. He seemed cleaner, but his patches of fur were still dull and clumpy. And he still smelled, though not as much as before. Now he smelled like garbage and roses.

  “Mroooow!”

  At least one of us thought it was an improvement.

  After we cleaned up, Danny and I wrapped Bert in the towel again and went inside my house. “The Hokey Pokey” was blaring, and the twins were having a dance party while my father was capturing the whole thing on video. My mom was sitting at the dining room table with the laptop, probably posting photos of frittata and bacon on the blog. They all looked so happy together . . . without me. Of course, no one even noticed us as we walked by them and up the stairs.

  Danny held Bert while I did my best to cat-proof my room. First, I put away all my books and art supplies. Then I moved all my science experiments to my highest shelf; my studies of static electricity and centrifugal force and liquid chromatography would have to wait. Finally, I pulled out my old purple beanbag chair and smooshed it in the center.

  “Now you have a place to sleep,” I informed Bert. Instead, he wriggled out of Danny’s arms and went into one of the baskets under my bed, where he made his own Bert-size nest
out of a bunch of my old stuffed animals. Almost instantly, he was asleep.

  “I guess he doesn’t like purple,” Danny said.

  “Well, that makes two of us,” I said. “Now we need to go to the library. And the pet store.”

  “For what?” Danny asked.

  “I need books on cats,” I said. “And we need food and supplies for Bert.”

  “Can’t you look it up online?” Danny asked, motioning to the phone tucked into my coveralls.

  Even though we’re only nine, Danny and I have our own phones, because his mom works a lot and my mom and dad are big fans of free-range parenting, which means I get to go wherever I want by myself, as long as I tell them where I’m going and what I’m doing and “use my head.” It’s supposed to encourage me to function independently. You’d think having phones would make us look cool to the other kids in the fourth grade — unfortunately, we seem uncool in too many other ways.

  “My parents disabled just about everything, remember? I can only use it to make emergency calls and take photos and play a few boring games,” I reminded him. “And my mom is never far from our laptop, in case she needs to post something.”

  “You can use my phone to look stuff up,” he offered.

  “I hate reading on yours. It gives me a headache,” I said.

  “All right, then. The library it is,” Danny said. “Though this is really going to affect my filming schedule.”

  “We can do more filming one day after school this week. But for now, Bert needs us,” I said.

  I leaned under the bed.

  “Hey, Bert,” I whispered. “Danny and I are going out for a little while. But we’ll be back soon with some cat stuff for you. Okay?”

  All I heard was wheezy snoring. I took that as a yes.

  “Danny and I are going to the library, then to the store!” I shouted as we ran out the door.

  “Be back in time for dinner — I’m making something special!” my dad yelled. The twins were still dancing around while my parents were editing their “Hokey Pokey” video.

  The YummCo Memorial Library is on the other side of town, near YummCo Incorporated, the corporate office where Danny’s mom works. Just about everything in Lambert has something to do with YummCo. Our school is named YummCo Elementary, and our colors are brown and green, too.