Return of ZomBert Read online

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  In a certain corporate headquarters on the edge of town, all was quiet. Even the animals in the research and development lab were quiet. But that’s because they were sedated.

  In the executive suite, far from the research and development lab, on the top floor of that corporate headquarters, one animal wasn’t sedated — it was sitting on the desk, and it was gulping eagerly.

  “This one is special,” the Big Boss said, feeding it a handful of raw meat.

  “That’s what you said about Y-91,” Kari said. That animal had been nothing but trouble for them. Just when it looked like they were about to make a breakthrough in their research, it escaped the lab — and it was still on the loose, somehow evading them at every turn. Even now, thinking about it made Kari angry.

  “Y-91 had potential, but it also had limits,” the Big Boss said. “Y-92 has surpassed our every expectation.”

  Greg appeared behind them. He seemed out of breath.

  “You’re late,” Kari said. Never in her life had she been late for anything. How was it that Greg got away with being such a slacker? No matter how hard Kari worked, it was clear he was the Big Boss’s favorite.

  “I’ve been on an assignment, remember?” Greg said.

  “And how is that assignment proceeding?” the Big Boss asked.

  “Mellie Gore definitely has contact with Y-91,” Greg said. “She talks about it all the time.”

  “We should have apprehended the animal when the Gore girl brought it to YummCo Animal Pals for a checkup,” Kari said. “We told the staff there to call us as soon as they saw a cat matching Y-91’s description.”

  “You told them to look for a cat missing most of its fur,” Greg reminded her. “The cat she brought in had a full, glossy coat.”

  “How was I to know its regeneration powers had kicked in so quickly?” Kari said, her face reddening. “In any case, the vet called us as soon as the bloodwork came back looking suspicious.”

  “Too late for it to help us,” Greg said.

  “The bloodwork has helped us in other ways,” Kari said.

  “I’ve heard enough of your past mistakes,” the Big Boss said, pounding a fist on the desk. “What are we doing now?”

  “I had the Gore house searched while the family was out. Our team found nothing,” Kari reminded the Big Boss.

  “I don’t think it lives in the house, not all the time anyway,” Greg said. “But it does seem to trust her. And our cyber team’s hack of her phone shows photos of her with Y-91 on more than a few occasions.”

  Greg thought he was so cool ever since the Big Boss put him in charge of the “cyber team.” So what if he’d used an e-mail from a Lost Pet sign to track down the Gore girl through her friend? It was just a lucky break. Kari almost missed Walter, the scientist Greg had replaced. At least Walter had been brilliant, someone she actually respected. Too bad he was dead now.

  “The bloodwork we were able to access through the system at YummCo Animal Pals has yielded some important findings. But we need to bring in Y-91 for further examination,” Kari said. “There’s a lot we still don’t know about how this formula works.”

  “The new version we’ve created shows promise,” the Big Boss said.

  “If that’s true, do we even need Y-91 anymore?” Greg asked.

  “We’re closer to our goal with the original formula — though we can’t know for sure until we do further experiments,” Kari said.

  “And Y-91 is evidence of our experiments. We can’t have that evidence roaming around,” the Big Boss said, giving the animal another handful of meat. It ate voraciously.

  “Why don’t we have YummCo Animal Pals contact the Gore girl and tell her there’s something wrong with the animal?” Kari suggested. “We can tell her it needs further testing.”

  “Too suspicious. I know all too well what girls like Mellie Gore are like at that age, too smart for their own good. No, we need something clever. She and the cat need to be brought out together, out in public,” the Big Boss said. “Somewhere they’re vulnerable.”

  “Why can’t we just show up at her house and take the cat?” Greg asked. “It’s our property, after all.”

  Kari sighed. Greg’s mind seemed like it was enveloped in a layer of bubble wrap.

  “Because YummCo isn’t supposed to be testing its products on animals,” she reminded him. “We’ve made that pledge on every one of our products. It would be a PR nightmare if it came out that we lied. Trust is everything.”

  “I get it. The last thing we want to do is parade our secrets in front of the town,” Greg said, looking sheepish.

  “Parade? Hmm . . .” The Big Boss thought for a moment, then smiled. “What an excellent idea.”

  Okay, Gore Gang. Who wants spaghetti carbo-nara?” my dad asked.

  “Me! Me-me-me-me-me!” Emmett and Ezra cried, clapping.

  “Me too,” I said. Though I knew, as always, I’d need to wait my turn.

  My mom and dad had been better about filming at the table and allowing for family time that wasn’t on camera. But they’d just converted their Family, Food, and Fun blog into a YummTube online channel, after they’d received a big sponsorship from YummCo Foods; it came with new YummPhones for us and a new YummBook laptop for my parents. The PR department there even talked to my parents about turning their videos into a book. So while my dad was hard at work developing recipes, my mom was doing whatever she could to “increase their fan base.”

  “How’s Bert?” my dad asked, finally scooping some spaghetti carbonara onto my plate. He knows exactly how much to give me, which is a lot, since spaghetti carbonara is one of my favorites. Anything with bacon is my favorite, actually.

  “Great,” I said. Thanks to my parents, I’d finally been able to take Bert to YummCo Animal Pals for a checkup, and according to his bloodwork, he was one of the healthiest cats the vet had ever seen. Still, Bert didn’t love being poked and prodded on the metal table; he growled the whole time and tried to scratch the vet and her assistant, so they had to put on special gloves to handle him. But I couldn’t blame him since I don’t love going to the doctor, either. On the upside, getting a clean bill of health from the vet meant that Bert was officially, finally part of our family.

  “And how are you doing with paying off our loan?” my mom asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “It’s . . . taking way longer than I thought,” I admitted. My parents had given me the money for Bert’s vet visit, but they expected me to pay it back ASAP; they said they were trying to teach me “fiscal responsibility.” They helped me put an odd-jobs notice on our neighborhood message board, but so far I’d only gotten calls to rake leaves and fold laundry, neither of which paid very much.

  “Bringing home the bacon isn’t easy,” Dad said.

  “And Bert doesn’t even like bacon,” I said. He really only liked killing his own food, and even then, he just preferred the heads of his prey.

  “That reminds me,” my mom sai
d. “On my way to the park with the twins this morning, I saw Mrs. Witt. She says she has some yard work for you to do.”

  “You mean the Candy Witch?” I asked.

  My mom sighed. “You need to stop calling her that,” she said. “Her name is Candy Witt.”

  “That’s what all the kids call her,” I said. “But she does give out the best treats on Halloween. I guess I can go and rake her leaves or whatever.”

  “It’s nice that you’ll be helping her out,” my dad said.

  “It’s nice that she’ll be paying me,” I reminded him.

  “I’m sure it’s been hard for her since Mr. Witt passed away,” Mom said.

  My dad looked at the twins’ plates. “If you don’t finish, you won’t get dessert. And tonight we’re having brownie sundaes, with my all-time fave: mint chocolate chip ice cream!”

  “I think you’d eat mint chocolate chip ice cream for every meal if you could,” my mom said.

  “You might be right,” my dad said, giving her a wink.

  “Sundaes!” said Emmett. “Wif whipped cream?”

  “And a chair-wee on top?” asked Ezra.

  “You got it,” said Dad.

  After dinner, I took my brownie sundae up to my room, where Bert was waiting for me, curled up on my bed. We had a little routine now where I let him into the house in the morning before I left for school, and he’d nap in my room until I got home. Then we’d hang out together before the sun went down, which was his time for dinner. Though his dinner involved hunting and beheading instead of cooking.

  “How are you?” I asked, scratching him gently behind his good ear. He purred a little, which I took as a good sign.

  He was looking a lot better than he had a month ago, when I first found him in a recycling barrel outside the YummCo Foods factory. Back then he was just skin and bones. Now he’d filled out a lot, his gray fur was growing in thick and shiny, and his yellow eyes were bright. He actually seemed almost . . . normal. But I knew the truth: Bert wasn’t like other cats. He was smart — and unusual, just like me.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to find a way to pay back my parents soon. Then we’ll have even more time to hang out.”

  I leaned in close.

  “I’m just glad you’re part of our family officially now,” I whispered.

  Bert looked at me and blinked, which is what cats do when they really like you. I blinked back.

  He’d had a dream about his mother.

  It was the last time he’d seen her, on a cold night the winter before. He and his brother and sister were not much older than kittens, but they no longer craved their mother’s milk. They were hungry for food, and there was none to be found.

  They slept in an abandoned den their mother had discovered, beneath the tallest pine tree in the forest. The den smelled faintly of fox musk, but it was big enough for all of them, and it was warm. They huddled together, he and his brother and sister, as their mother went out into the cold to find them something to eat.

  “I’ll be back,” she’d told them. “Stay here, and stay together.”

  She’d never returned. The night turned to day, and then to night again, before he and his siblings felt brave enough to venture out into the forest to find her. They’d walked together until they got lost and hid in a pile of leaves underneath a shrub.

  That’s when the Rough Hands had found them and brought them to the Cold Place and put them all in cages. Huddled there under the shrub with his brother and sister was the last time he’d felt their warmth, or had any hope that they’d survive together. When he woke up on the girl’s bed where he slept now, he almost thought he could feel them next to him.

  He stalked through the woods now with two things in mind: he needed to eat, and he needed to plan.

  First things first. He stopped, sniffing the air. Something juicy was hiding, just beneath that pile of leaves. When his hunger came to him, it was almost painful, like a stabbing deep inside and a pounding in his brain. Once he ate, he’d feel stronger — and lighter, almost as if he could fly. And his brain would start buzzing. Lately, he’d been remembering and understanding more and more, as if pieces were being connected inside his head.

  Whatever was rustling beneath the leaves, he could sense its heartbeat, so fast, so anxious. He would make it quick with this one, put it out of its misery. He did enjoy playing with his prey, but lately he was distracted by something more important: revenge.

  He thought back to the Cold Place, where he spent his time in a cage, or held down on a metal table as the Rough Hands pricked and poked him with even colder, sharper things. The eyes of those who tended to him were unfeeling, especially the One who had eyes like ice and the roughest hands. The other animals were afraid of the One, and the other humans were, too. The One had told the Rough Hands to give him something that made him sick and weak. If he hadn’t escaped when he did, he would have died. But he hadn’t wanted to leave alone. He wished he could have brought others with him. His brother, even weaker than he was, who cried in his cage each night until he’d been taken away. His sister, who lasted only a few days in the Cold Place before she succumbed to whatever the Rough Hands had done to her.

  The thing under the leaves began to stir. A small brown-furred thing with a stripe down its back, big brown eyes filled with fear.

  You will do nicely, he thought, ready to pounce.

  I thought my mom said you had yard work for me,” I said.

  “Well, technically, this shed is in the yard,” Mrs. Witt said. She brushed a silvery cobweb away from her equally silvery hair.

  I coughed. There were cobwebs everywhere, and dust. But more than anything, there were papers — diagrams and charts and scribbled formulas on the tables and tacked to the walls. And there were all sorts of lab equipment, including a microscope nicer than any I’d seen in my KidScience! catalog.

  “This was my husband’s workshop,” Mrs. Witt explained.

  “You said he worked for YummCo.”

  “They hired him after they bought our business,” Mrs. Witt said. “Walter and I used to have our own candy company, Witts Confectionery.”

  “You owned a candy company?” I said. It sounded like the best job ever, maybe even better than being a scientist, which was what I wanted to be.

  “Yep, I was Candy who made candy. Walter used to say I finally lived up to my name,” Mrs. Witt said, chuckling. “He had a PhD in chemistry, so he helped me come up with all sorts of concoctions. And then YummCo came to town and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse, for the business and all our recipes, and a job for Walter in their lab.”

  “Mr. Witt was a chemist?” I said. I always thought the Witts were just old people who lived down the street from us and gave out the best candy on Halloween.

  “We both studied chemistry in college,” Mrs. Witt said. “That’s where we met. Then we got married and had Wally, our son. Walter went on to get his PhD and while I stayed home with Wally, I started making little candies, just for fun. Then Walter started helping me on the weekends; that’s when things really took off. We had a nice storefront on Main Street and a factory on the edge of town.”

  She brushed off a photo in a thick frame on one of the walls and showed it to me. Mr. and Mrs. Witt looked much younger; they were standing in front of a tall brick building with lots of windows. A plaque on the frame read THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING.

  “You both look so happy here,” I said.

  “It was one of the happiest days of our lives together. This was the grand opening of the Witts Confectionery factory. We’d put everything we had into making that dream come true,” Mrs. Witt explained. “And it was our anniversary — Walter and I used to joke that this was the best anniversary gift we could have given to each other. He called our little factory ‘the gift that keeps on giving.’”

  “Wait,” I said, leaning in. “This looks familiar.”

  “It should. It’s where YummCo corporate headquarters is now. They just painted th
e whole thing white,” Mrs. Witt said. “And added the campus around it, with their own factory buildings.”

  She showed me another frame, containing blueprints.

  “Walter and I worked closely with the architect on renovating the old Lambert Pharmaceutical building. It was so exciting back then, saving an old town landmark, working together and building our business,” Mrs. Witt said.

  “I wish I’d known Mr. Witt,” I said. “Science is my favorite subject.”

  “It’s my favorite, too,” Mrs. Witt said. “I’ll talk with you about it whenever you like. It always makes me think of Walter.”

  “So . . . where do you want me to start?” I asked.

  Mrs. Witt pulled out some boxes. “I haven’t been able to come out here since Walter died. It makes me too sad. But I don’t want his things to sit out here and get dusty and moldy, or worse. A few months back, someone actually tried to break in here — good thing Walter’s alarm system was still activated.”

  “Why would someone want to break in here?” I asked, looking around again at the dusty clutter.

  “You’d be surprised what some people consider valuable,” Mrs. Witt said. “Of course, everything here is valuable to me because it all feels like parts of Walter. I need a fresh perspective, and your mom said you were looking for jobs in the neighborhood and that you liked science. So I thought we could go through everything together so I can decide what to keep and what to donate to the high school.”

  A lab coat and goggles hung on pegs next to the shed door. “Were these Mr. Witt’s?”

  “They were. I’ll probably give them to Wally,” Mrs. Witt said. She took them down and gave them a shake.

  We both coughed. And then Mrs. Witt laughed.

  “I guess I’ve put this off long enough,” she said. “Where should we start?”

  “Maybe with some dusting,” I suggested.

  What happened to you?” Danny asked when I finally got to his apartment that afternoon.