Flesh of the Zombie

  SCREAM STREET

  FLESH OF THE ZOMBIE

  TOMMY DNBAVAND

  Luke Watson stared at the length of spine on the grass in front of him and frowned in concentration Biology lessons at his old school had never been like this.

  “Well?” asked Dr Skully. “Can you, or can you not, indicate where the lumbar section starts and ends?”

  Luke briefly wondered whether he should be more surprised that he was being taught by a skeleton, or that it was the teacher’s own detached backbone he was examining. Since he had arrived in Scream Street, however, surprises like this had become an everyday event, so neither fact now seemed that strange.

  Daylight had only just returned to Scream Street after a century-old darkness spell had been broken. As a result, today’s class was taking place in Dr Skully’s back garden — and while the surroundings were comfortable, Luke found it difficult to concentrate in such a casual atmosphere.

  “I’m waiting,” said the teacher.

  “I, er …” began Luke.

  A clatter from the patio provided a welcome distraction. “It’s no good, sir,” complained a small Egyptian mummy. “I can’t reassemble your ribs!”

  “Cleo, please be careful with those,” sighed Dr Skully. “The last time I provided ribs for a pupil, he lost three of them and my pyjamas didn’t fit for a month!”

  “But, sir, I—”

  The mummy squealed as she was interrupted by a fist punching up through the grass.

  The young vampire sitting beside her grinned. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  A green cracked face appeared through the widening hole, its milky eyes blinking in the sunlight. “Looking for something, Doug?” asked the vampire as he reached inside his cape and produced a leg, its skin covered with sores.

  “Dude!” beamed the zombie. “I’ve been searching for that all morning.”

  “I found it on my way to school,” said the vampire. “Heavy night?”

  Doug nodded. “Party city, man! Now I got to get busy with the sewing kit. Big day, today!” The zombie retrieved his missing limb and sank back into the hole. “Smell you later, little dudes …”

  The teacher’s skull glared across the garden from its position on an upturned bucket. “Don’t think your work with the undead will get you off, Resus Negative!” it warned. “You still have the lower half of my leg to assemble.”

  “Why do we have to learn this stuff?” groaned Resus.

  “Because,” explained the skull, “I did not spend thirty years standing in the corner of a university science lab only to have the knowledge I gleaned go to waste!”

  “But, sir,” grinned Resus, “my brain’s full — look!”

  Luke fought back laughter as the vampire reached into the folds of his cape once again and produced a squishy grey organ coated in clear jelly.

  “That’s disgusting,” moaned Cleo, gagging as she pulled her bandages up over her mouth.

  “Whose brain is that?” demanded Dr Skully.

  “My great-uncle Igor sent it to me,” replied Resus.

  “Your family is sick!” said Cleo.

  “How can you say that?” asked Resus. “You had your brain pulled out of your nose with metal hooks when you were mummified!”

  “Maybe,” said Cleo, “but I don’t carry it around like some sort of troph—”

  She screamed as another hand burst up through the grass in front of her.

  Resus smiled. “What have you lost now, Doug?”

  A grey head forced its way up through the earth. One of the creature’s eyes was missing, and sticky brown fluid poured from a gash in its cheek.

  “Er, that’s not Doug …” said Luke.

  “Brain drain!” groaned the zombie, scanning the garden. “Brain drain!”

  Resus jumped as another hand exploded through the lawn, followed by another a few metres away. More of the monsters appeared, digging their way out of the ground, all of them chanting the same phrase.

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!”

  “Eurgh,” squealed Cleo. “Get them away from me!”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Resus. “They’re only zombies.”

  “I just don’t like them, that’s all,” shivered Cleo as the creatures stumbled around the garden. One of them staggered past her and landed with a splash in Dr Skully’s pond. Tiny skeletal fish darted for cover in the reeds.

  “Will somebody please put a stop to this nonsense?” demanded Dr Skully.

  Resus approached the zombie nearest to him. “I think you’ve got the wrong address,” he said, speaking loudly and slowly. “The only zombies in Scream Street live at number twenty-eight!”

  “You think they’re friends of Doug, Turf and Berry?” asked Luke.

  Resus shrugged. “Either that or they’re tunnelling north for the summer.”

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!” murmured the zombie.

  “You’re not draining my brain!” shouted Cleo, backing away. A pair of grey scabby arms grabbed the mummy and the one-eyed zombie lifted her off her feet. Cleo squealed.

  “Put her down,” Luke ordered. The grey zombie squeezed Cleo tighter.

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!”

  “I said, put her down!” yelled Luke.

  “Luke, behind you!” shouted Cleo.

  Luke turned to find another zombie almost upon him. Snatching up Dr Skully’s spine from where it lay on the lawn, he hit the creature full in the face, knocking its head clean off its shoulders. The body collapsed to the ground, arms and legs twitching wildly.

  “That’ll teach you to lumbar after me,” quipped Luke, grinning at his own joke and turning to give Resus a high-five.

  “But I don’t get it,” said the vampire, shaking his head. “Zombies don’t normally act like this.”

  “Then we’ve obviously been watching different movies!”

  “No, I mean, something’s got them worked up. They’re usually quite docile.”

  “Yeah,” said Luke sarcastically. “Remind me to get one as a pet when this is over.”

  “When you two have finished chatting,” called Cleo, wriggling under the grasp of the grey zombie, “can I remind you that I’m currently having the life squeezed out of me?”

  “OK,” sighed Resus, beginning to search his cloak again. He produced a flaming torch, which he jabbed at the zombie over Cleo’s shoulder.

  “Mind my bandages,” squealed Cleo. “You’ll scorch them.”

  “Pardon me for saving you,” snapped Resus, pushing the torch into the zombie’s chest. “Now, get behind me!” he yelled as the creature released the mummy and began to bat furiously at the flames.

  Luke and Cleo fell into position behind Resus as he kept the zombies at bay with the length of burning wood.

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!”

  “They’re everywhere!” exclaimed Cleo, glancing over the fence to see four more zombies fighting their way out of next door’s flower-bed.

  “How do we get out of here?” asked Luke.

  “I think we might have to call on your furry friend,” suggested Resus.

  Luke sighed. His capacity to change into a werewolf was what had brought his family to Scream Street in the first place. Now he was in the middle of a quest that would enable him to take his parents home, and he wasn’t going to jeopardize it by using his powers to attack anyone.

  “I won’t hurt people,” he said quietly.

  “You can’t hurt them,” retorted Resus. “They’re dead!”

  “No,” said Luke. “They’re undead, and from what I’ve seen around here, that’s a small but vital difference.”

  “You find us a way out, then, Mr Kind-and-Caring,” said Resus.

  “Hang on,” said
Luke. “Can anyone else hear music?”

  As they all stopped to listen, the sound of a pounding drumbeat and matching bass line echoed out across Scream Street. “Where’s it coming from?” asked Cleo.

  “They seem to know,” said Luke as the zombies suddenly lost interest in the trio and turned to face the source of the music. Slowly they lurched out of the garden towards Scream Street’s central square.

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!”

  “Something strange is going on,” said Resus. “We’d better get to the square and find out what.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” said Luke. “I’d better make sure my mum and dad are OK first. They’ll freak out if any of these zombies turn up in our garden.” As he raced off in one direction, across the gardens, Resus and Cleo set off in the other.

  After a moment’s silence, a small voice spoke up. “Who’s going to put me back together?” asked Dr Skully.

  Resus and Cleo skidded to a halt as they arrived in Scream Street. Zombies tottered out from every garden. Cracked hands pushed up through flower-beds and body parts of all descriptions lay scattered about as the vast army of the undead marched to the sound of the same monotonous phrase.

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!”

  “There are thousands of them,” cried Cleo, “and they’re all heading for the square!”

  “At least that’s away from Luke’s house,” said Resus with relief as he saw that the zombies were lurching in the opposite direction to his friend’s retreating figure.

  Although Luke had quickly made friends in Scream Street, his parents remained terrified of the world into which they had been thrown. Since arriving in their new home they had suffered poltergeist attacks, a vampire plague and an invasion of spiders. Several thousand walking corpses might just push them over the edge.

  Resus and Cleo followed the tide of zombies towards the square. One of them reached out to Resus as it staggered past, black drool dripping from its mouth. The vampire ducked under the creature’s arms. “Watch out,” he warned Cleo. “I think the walk is making them peckish.”

  “Well, I’ve got nothing to worry about,” said Cleo. “My brain is wrapped in greaseproof paper in the fridge at home.”

  “But they’ll have cracked open your skull before they found that out,” Resus pointed out, grinning as Cleo’s expression fell.

  The journey was slow going, as the pair could only move at the same shuffling pace as the zombies around them. They craned their necks to get a glimpse of what was drawing the zombies on, but their view was blocked by a sea of decomposing heads. The closer they got to the centre of Scream Street, the louder the music became. By the time they reached the main square, the drumbeat and bass line were almost deafening.

  Cleo and Resus stared. They were surrounded by thousands of dancing zombies, all lurching in time to the music. Occasionally a cracking sound would ring out, followed by a scream, as one of the more enthusiastic undead snapped a leg bone and fell to the ground.

  “This is crazy!” said Cleo.

  “It officially freaks me out,” agreed Resus. Then he caught a glimpse of a booth set up in the corner of the square. A zombie wearing a backwards baseball cap stood behind it. “Look!” he said. “That’s where the music’s coming from.”

  Cleo winced as a boogying zombie staggered sideways and stepped on her toes. She tried to force her way between two more of them but quickly became jammed. “What do we do now?” she asked. “I can’t move.”

  Resus pulled a pair of sunglasses from his cloak and put them on. “We dance!” he grinned.

  When Luke finally caught up with Resus and Cleo, he was amazed to find them dancing beside the DJ booth. “Have you two gone insane?”

  “It’s the fastest way to get anywhere,” explained Resus. “Besides, if you dance, they think you’re one of them and stop nagging for a taste of your brain.”

  “Try it,” added Cleo.

  Luke’s face fell. “You surely don’t expect me to—”

  A nearby zombie in a ragged tuxedo made a grab for him.

  “Brain drain! Brain drain!”

  Luke began to tap his feet in time to the music and the zombie instantly lost interest. “I feel stupid,” he moaned as he flung his arm out in a classic disco pose and, in doing so, slapped a second zombie in the face. When he pulled his hand back there was an eyeball stuck to the end of his thumb.

  “You’ll feel considerably more stupid if one of these guys takes a bite out of your grey matter,” warned Resus.

  Luke shook his hand violently to rid himself of the rogue eyeball. Several of the zombies around him took this to be a new dance move and copied it. “In that case, I’ll get with the beat!”

  “How are your mum and dad?” asked Cleo, trying out a complicated twist.

  “Shaken, but safe,” said Luke, jiggling awkwardly. “I’ve locked them in the bathroom until it’s safe for them to come out.”

  “When will that be?” asked Resus.

  “I’ve no idea,” admitted Luke. “Although … I nearly forgot. I grabbed this on the way back out.” He pulled a book from his pocket and spoke to the face embossed on its silver cover. “What’s happening, Mr Skipstone?”

  The book was Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street. Upon his death, many years before, its author — Samuel Skipstone — had cast a spell to merge himself with the pages of his work. This enabled the scholar to continue his research into the street’s unusual residents.

  The metallic face opened its eyes and looked around. “I’m afraid this is a new experience, even for me,” Skipstone replied. “The most recent record I have for a gathering of zombies relates to an occurrence over three hundred years ago, when eight of them turned up with a picnic blanket, a bottle of spinal fluid and a half-eaten zebra.”

  “Well, we’d better find out soon,” said Luke, hurriedly speeding up his dancing as a drooling zombie glared down at him. “My mum and dad are terrified.”

  “Then I assume you will also want to know where to find the next founding father’s relic?” said Skipstone. With the book’s help, Luke had already tracked down three of six artefacts left by Scream Street’s first residents. Once he collected them all he would have the power to open a doorway out of the community and take his parents home.

  “Now?” asked Luke. “But there are zombies everywhere!”

  “I think you’ll find my words strangely appropriate,” smiled the author.

  The trio watched as Skipstone’s Tales of Scream Street flipped through its pages, which were filled with scrawled handwriting and sketched illustrations. It stopped at a short story entitled “Goldifangs and the Three Banshees”. The words slowly faded away and were soon replaced with the clue to the next relic’s location:

  “A zombie’s flesh,” breathed Luke.

  “Well,” said Cleo. “We’ve got plenty to choose from.”

  “But only one was the first to live in Scream Street,” reminded Resus.

  Luke stared at the hordes of dancing zombies around them. “How are we ever going to find the right one among this lot?”

  Resus pulled a bottle of beer from his cape and grinned. “We talk to our man on the inside!” As he flipped the top from the beer bottle, a hand shot out of the crowd and grabbed it. It was Doug.

  “Cheers, little dude!” beamed the familiar face, taking a long drink.

  “Doug, what’s going on?” asked Resus.

  “Party’s going on, my man,” replied the zombie, wiggling his hips.

  “No, I mean, what’s all this about?”

  Doug smiled, revealing the maggots crawling around inside his mouth. “It’s the greatest zombie rock festival in the world, man.”

  “Zombie rock festival?” asked Luke.

  “Dudes, welcome to Deadstock!”

  Cleo gazed around the square. “It’s—”

  “Totally awesome, I know!” said Doug excitedly. “Me and Turf were psyched when it was relocated here at the last minute.” He gestured t
owards the zombie spinning records. “This here’s my main man, Flatboy Skin.” Resus tried not to stare as he realized that the zombie was only a couple of millimetres thick — and had tyre marks running up the front of his body.

  The DJ nodded his wafer-thin head towards them. “Whassup?”

  “What are those guys doing?” asked Luke, indicating a team of zombies in ragged overalls who were moving wooden boards around.

  “They’re setting up the stage, little dude,” replied Doug. “Ready for our headlining act, Brain Drain.”

  “Brain Drain!” exclaimed Cleo. “So the zombies weren’t after our brains at all.”

  Doug fixed the trio with a serious stare. “Brain-eating is strictly off limits during Deadstock,” he said, adding in a whisper, “although I know a guy who can get you a nice juicy spleen for the right price …”

  “But the zombies were grabbing at us!” said Resus.

  “It’s the spirit of Deadstock, dudes,” replied the zombie. “Hug and be hugged! There was a song about it on Brain Drain’s second album.”

  “I almost hate to ask,” said Luke, leaning against a tall black speaker, “but who, or what, are Brain Drain?”

  “Dudes,” enthused Doug, “they’re only the hottest flesh-metal band in the world! The Drab Four themselves! This is one of their songs playing now: ‘Eat Up from the Feet Up’. Vein is such a righteous singer.”

  Luke, Resus and Cleo strained to listen to the song’s lyrics over the noise of a screeching electric guitar.

  “Biting, chewing, ripping, crunching!” screamed the singer. “I’m gonna dine on you!”

  Luke smiled politely. “It’s great.”

  “It’s loud,” added Cleo.

  “It’s finished!” growled a voice, and the music suddenly came to a stop. Luke, Resus and Cleo spun round to discover Sir Otto Sneer, the landlord of Scream Street, behind them at the DJ booth. Clutched in his hand was an electrical plug, and smoke curled up from the noxious cigar clamped between his teeth.

  “Deadstock is over!” he roared.

  Gradually the dancing zombies realized there was no longer any music playing. One by one they shuffled round to glare at Sir Otto.