Zombies of the Science Fair

by Bruce Coville

  Our school was scheduled to be the last one presenting on Friday. We ten finalists spent a lot of time debating whether that was a good time slot. I was of the opinion that by being last we would have a good chance to stand out in the judges’ minds. Jordan was of the opinion that by Saturday morning they would have forgotten us. He was also of the opinion that any opinion I had must be wrong by definition.

  * * *

  The gym at the high school is enormous, big enough to contain two full basketball courts. The custodian had pulled out this kind of folding wall that divided the gym in half, so the high school students could still do gym-type stuff while the science fair finals were going on.

  Setup went pretty well, but it was clear there were a lot of good projects from all over the city. By the time Friday night rolled around, I was so tense I could hardly breathe. Mom made me dress up much more than usual and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get my hair to look just right. We were barely speaking to each other by the time we left the apartment.

  We met Pleskit and McNally at the entrance to the high school. I didn’t say anything to Pleskit, but sometimes I wonder how he feels about the fact that his Fatherly One so rarely shows up for this kind of thing. Meenom was a good guy and all, but in some ways it seemed as if Pleskit didn’t have much more of a father than I did.

  Linnsy and Michael were there already, as was Calvin Jackson, the third grader who had won. The others came along soon. Jordan was last. He came with his father, who looks sort of like a movie star. I don’t know why that should annoy me, but it does.

  We went in together. The five judges—a completely different group than had judged at our school—were sitting at a long table. They introduced themselves. Three of them were from the university, one was from a big chemical company that operates here in Syracuse, and one was from a new computer company that had just started up in town.

  Our parents and guardians sat in the bleachers behind them, facing us.

  Little Calvin was the first to demonstrate his project, which was on lenses. The judges listened to him carefully, nodding and making notes.

  I was third. The judges seemed to like what I had done—especially the charts I had made to show the different droplet size and range of the various sprayers. And they all got a chuckle out of Gramma’s old-fashioned spray gun.

  Linnsy’s project actually got some applause, which made the rest of us jealous.

  When Jordan did his demonstration, one of the judges leaned forward and said, “You do that all by yourself, young man?”

  Jordan blushed, but claimed it was all his own work.

  Then it was Pleskit’s turn. The judges seemed fascinated by his work and began to ask him all kinds of questions. Finally Pleskit asked if they would like a demonstration.

  “I’d like that very much,” said Dr. Frobisher, one of the women from the university.

  “Tim, would you mind giving me a hand?” asked Pleskit.

  I was in the bleachers, sitting with Mom. I glanced at her. She looked surprised, and a little nervous. But she didn’t shake her head. So I walked down to where Pleskit was standing.

  “Just a small dose, right?” I asked quietly.

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Then he flipped off the safety switch and shot me with the ray.

  Once again I felt that peculiar lethargy slip over me—though not nearly as strongly as when I had given myself the superdose the week before.

  Pleskit suggested I was feeling very intelligent, then invited the judges to ask me some math questions. After I answered them with no problem, Dr. Frobisher said, “That appears very impressive, Pleskit. On the other hand, since we don’t know what Tim’s ability was before you dosed him with the Suggestibility Ray, it’s hard to say how effective it really was. How do we know he’s not just a natural math whiz?”

  This idea caused Jordan to laugh out loud.

  “I believe that human sensory ability is also considerably more acute than most people realize,” said Pleskit. “Would a demonstration of that be of interest?”

  “Absolutely,” said Dr. Thornton, the guy from the chemical company.

  Pleskit turned to me. “Tim, I believe your nose is far more powerful than you ever knew. In fact, I’m sure of it. Why not try it out and see?”

  I took a deep breath. Suddenly the air was rich with scents and smells, such a blizzard of them that I felt overwhelmed at first. I wondered if this was what the world smells like to a dog.

  Then I noticed that something was wrong—really wrong.

  I sniffed again… and again.

  Each person in the room had a distinct odor. With my nose as powerful as it was right then, I could have picked out any one of them in a crowd of thousands.

  But despite these distinct differences, every one of them had a basic odor that was unmistakably human.

  All but two. Pleskit, of course, did not smell human.

  Neither did the judge at the end of the table, the one from the new computer company.

  CHAPTER 16 [PLESKIT]

  ATTACK OF THE ZOMBIES

  “What do you smell?” I asked.

  To my astonishment, Tim replied, “I smell an alien.”

  Then he pointed to the judge at the end of the table.

  A dead silence fell over the gymnasium. After a second the judge that Tim had pointed to began to laugh.

  “Well, I guess your little invention isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be, is it, Pleskit?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t believe Tim was wrong. On the other hand, if he was right, it meant something really bad was going on. I didn’t want to press the situation, for fear of pushing the fake judge into some desperate action.

  As it turned out, it didn’t make any difference what I said. “Grab him, McNally!” cried Tim’s mother. “Get the alien creep!”

  McNally started forward—not toward the judge, but toward me. I assume he was going to put himself between the judge and me, just in case Tim was right. But the “judge” was a lot closer. He vaulted over the table and snatched the Suggestibility Ray out of my hand.

  Then he turned it on McNally full force.

  “Stop right where you are!” he ordered.

  McNally stopped, stood absolutely still, not even blinking.

  A confusion of shouting broke out in the bleachers. People were getting up to run—some toward the renegade judge, some toward the exits. The other judges had leaped to their feet as well.

  The renegade turned the Suggestibility Ray on them, swinging it back and forth. “Don’t move!” he ordered. “Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move.”

  The judges stopped in their tracks.

  The renegade sprang forward and snatched one of the lenses from little Calvin’s display. Stretching out one arm, he was able to hold it in front of the ray gun. Then he switched on the ray again. The purple light was diffused by the lens so that it covered a much wider area. Scanning the ray back and forth he kept repeating, “You want to hold still, you want to hold still, you want to hold still!”

  You could see that at first people struggled against his command. But the initial dose of the ray was enough to slow them down—which bought him time to give everyone in the crowd a shot of it.

  The second dose slowed them down even more.

  By the third pass, people were barely twitching.

  He swung the ray on Tim and me, as well. I wasn’t sure how it would affect Tim, since I had already given him a slight dose of the ray. I was pretty sure how it would affect me—which is to say, not at all. I had designed the ray for the human brain, not the brain of someone from Hevi-Hevi.

  My suspicion was right. When the so-called judge looked at me and said, “You want to stand still,” I didn’t feel the slightest urge to do so.

  But I did anyway. I figured there was no reason for him to know the ray hadn’t affected me.

  At least, not yet.

  He looked around the room and laughed. The
n he took a small communications device from his pocket. Flipping it open, he began speaking in Galactic Standard.

  “Urkding? Skizzdor here. Things just got a little… complicated.” A pause while he listened, then: “No… no, I have everything under control. It’s just that there was an unexpected development, and we should make the pickup as soon as possible.” Another pause to listen, then words that sent a cold chill into my clinkus. “I know that’s earlier than planned. Just do it! I’ll have the ambassador’s brat waiting at the side door for you!”

  Muttering angrily to himself, Skizzdor shut the comm device. Then he snapped his head up at the sound of one of the gym doors opening.

  It can’t be Urkding already! I thought desperately.

  I was right. It was one of the school custodians, stepping through the door in the divider wall.

  Skizzdor snatched up the Suggestibility Ray and ran toward the custodian. As soon as his back was turned, I grabbed something else—the antidote. I ordered Tim to open his mouth. To my relief he was still responding to my suggestions. I poured a few drops onto his tongue. He blinked, then shivered.

  “Man, Pleskit, we’re in big trouble!” he whispered.

  From behind us, I heard Skizzdor ordering the custodian to hold still.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I can’t leave my mother,” said Tim.

  “He’s not after your mother! He wants me. I just want you to come with me because I figure we’ll have a better chance of stopping him if we work together. Come on, let’s go.”

  We took off for the door at the far side of the gym.

  Behind us we heard Skizzdor shout with anger, “Stop! Stop, you two!”

  We didn’t stop, of course. Why should we? We weren’t under his control.

  But the rest of the people in the gym were.

  “Stop them!” he bellowed. “Stop those boys.”

  As one, the people in the gym—our friends, our friends’ parents, McNally, the other judges, even Tim’s mom—began shambling toward us.

  CHAPTER 17 [TIM]

  “GET THEM!”

  I had already learned that my brain was capable of far more than I’d realized.

  When the zombies started chasing us, I realized this was true of my body, too. I covered the distance to that door in record time. Unfortunately, it was locked.

  Pleskit and I looked at each other in horror. The zombies were shambling toward us, their arms raised, their eyes wide. It looked like a scene from Night of the Living Dead. The worst thing was seeing my mom as one of them.

  We had one thing on our side. The zombies were moving in a slow, deliberate fashion. I guess when you drain someone’s willpower, you can force them to do something, but you can’t make them do it well.

  That didn’t stop Skizzdor from shouting, “Faster! Faster, you fools!”

  “Faster!” mumbled the zombies. “Faster!”

  But they didn’t go faster. They just kept coming at us in the same slow, deliberate fashion. It was a little like being menaced by a steamroller.

  The zombies were in the middle of the gym. The next closest door was in the divider wall—which was on the other side of them. But Pleskit and I were so much faster than they were that I thought maybe if we ran around the edge of the gym, we could beat them to the door.

  Maybe.

  Quickly I told Pleskit what I had in mind. “Let’s go for it!” he gasped.

  We took off running.

  “Get them!” shrieked Skizzdor.

  “Get them, get them, get them,” droned the zombies, swinging around as a group to move after us. They shambled toward the wall of the gym. Pleskit and I literally ran for our lives. Jordan, his eyes glazed and his face blank, was at the head of the pack. McNally and my mother were close behind him. As we passed the midpoint of the gym, the zombie pack turned again to follow us. But we had crossed the danger point.

  We got to the door and yanked it open.

  The lights in this section of the gym were out. We stumbled into the darkness.

  The zombies reached the door behind us. The narrow opening slowed them down because they were all trying to push their way through it at the same time.

  “Ouch!” I cried as I bumped into something. In the dim light that filtered past the zombie-jammed doorway, I figured out that it was a vaulting box.

  “Come on!” urged Pleskit.

  “Get them!” chanted the zombies.

  I got past the vaulting box but wasn’t able to run as fast as I wanted for fear I would bump into something else. It wasn’t the pain I was afraid of—it was the chance that if I ran too fast I would knock myself unconscious, in which case the zombies would get me.

  When we got to the far side of the darkened gym we made our way along a wall until we found a doorway. It swung open. I groped for a light switch. When I found it, the glare of light temporarily dazzled us. Blinking, squinting, I realized we had stumbled into the girls’ locker room.

  Normally I would have been horrified, curious, and embarrassed. Now I was just horrified—not because of where we were, but because I could hear the zombies shambling through the darkness after us. I slammed the door shut and cursed the fact that I couldn’t lock it without a key.

  I looked around, desperately seeking a place to hide. Then I had a brainstorm. “Up there!” I cried to Pleskit.

  “The ceiling?” he asked, puzzled.

  “I think those tiles will lift up,” I said. “Come on, give me a boost so I can see.”

  We scrambled onto one of the benches that went between the rows of lockers, then Pleskit hoisted me up so I could climb on top of the lockers. The ceiling was about four feet above them. I pushed against one of the tiles. Bingo! It rose up, revealing an open space about two feet high above it.

  We could hear the zombies scrabbling at the door. It wouldn’t be long before they had it open.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching a hand down.

  Soon Pleskit was beside me. I boosted him up into the space. “Be careful,” I whispered as he climbed in. “Those tiles won’t hold our weight. Make sure you stay on the metal crossbars.”

  Even those were iffy, and I winced as I saw one of them bend. Even so, I climbed up beside him. We moved the tile back into place, leaving just a crack so we could peer down.

  Seconds later the zombies got the door open.

  “Get them! Get them!” they chanted as they stumbled into the room. They marched slowly forward, looking from side to side. They went directly underneath us without realizing where we were. As they neared the far end of the locker room, they began to slow down, clearly confused. As I looked down at them, something bothered me. Before I could figure out what it was, I was distracted by Pleskit whispering, “If only we could give them the antidote.”

  It was a great idea. Except how do you get two dozen or so zombies to take an antidote—especially if they are mindlessly bent on “getting” you?

  Suddenly I had an answer!

  Unfortunately, before I could explain it to Pleskit, Skizzdor burst into the locker room.

  “Where are they?” he shrieked.

  The zombies, having no idea where we were, remained silent.

  Unfortunately, while the zombies were mindless, Skizzdor was not. “You have superb noses!” he said. “You can smell with incredible precision. NOW FIND THOSE KIDS!”

  The zombies began to sniff. From personal experience, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out where we were.

  “Come on,” I whispered to Pleskit. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “But where?” he asked.

  “Back to the science fair.”

  “What?”

  “No time to explain. Come on, let’s move!”

  I moved more than I intended. Trying to lift one of the tiles so we could climb down, I crashed through another one and landed on top of one of the lockers.

  “Get them!” shrieked Skizzdor.

&nb
sp; CHAPTER 18 [PLESKIT]

  AIR PATROL

  When Tim suggested we go back to the gym, I thought he had lost his mind.

  When he fell through the ceiling, I was sure of it.

  But by then, we had no choice. The zombies knew where we were, and were after us. I jumped down beside him, then helped him scramble from the locker top down to the bench.

  Skizzdor, much faster than the zombies, was trying to get through them to reach us. But they completely jammed the narrow area between the lockers, so though he was shrieking in frustration for them to get out of the way, we had time to get out of the locker room ahead of him.

  The gym wasn’t quite so dark now, since it was getting light spill from both doors—the one to the locker room, and the one that led back to the science fair. Now I could see the forms of all the equipment, though I didn’t know what it was called.

  At the opposite end of the gym, barely visible, was another door. It had been propped open—probably by the custodian who had come through with the broom.

  “That way!” said Tim, pointing to the door.

  “I thought you said you wanted to go back to the science fair!”

  “Yeah, but I want to take the long way, so we can get a bigger lead on them.”

  The moment of delay was nearly fatal. We heard the zombies coming through the door behind us. No time to argue the point, and Tim had an idea—whatever it was—which was more than I could say at the moment.

  So we went in his direction.

  I tripped over a floor mat. “Zgribnick!” I cried.

  Despite the approaching zombies, Tim stopped to help me up. We stumbled forward again, but the lost time hurt us—as did a new problem.

  “I knew there was something wrong in the locker room!” cried Tim.

  I saw at once what he meant. Skizzdor had not sent all the zombies in to get us. He had left another batch of them waiting in the gym, and now they were blocking our path.