Jurassic Carp

by Mo O'Hara

  Pradeep and I were rushed through the doors with the rest of the crowd.

  ‘Mark seemed pretty interested in talking to Dr McDoom,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Pradeep admitted.

  ‘And her laugh definitely sounded evil,’ I added.

  ‘But we don’t have any proof that she’s actually an Evil Scientist. Even if she is talking to Mark. She’s a world-renowned palaeontologist. We can’t just accuse her of being evil just because she has an evil laugh,’ Pradeep defended her.

  ‘And an evil name,’ I said.

  Frankie popped his head through the holes in both jackets and nodded.

  ‘McDoom does sound kind of evil,’ Pradeep admitted.

  ‘And the fact that she told everyone that she wants to clone a giant monster version of prehistoric Frankie,’ I said. Frankie started to thrash when I said that, so I pushed him back into the bottle and balled up the jackets around it. ‘We need to let Frankie work off some steam,’ I added.

  ‘We’ve got some time before we meet Mum and Sami at the school pool for Sami’s swim class,’ Pradeep said, looking at his watch. ‘Maybe we can go to the pool early and let Frankie have some swim time?’

  I whispered to the jackets, ‘Would you like that, Frankie?’ The jackets moved up and down.

  ‘I think that’s a yes,’ Pradeep said.

  ‘Also, the old lifeguard that works on Saturdays never wears his glasses,’ I added. ‘He thinks that Frankie is a pool toy. Perfect!’

  We walked out of the hall and headed towards the pool. Our swim bags were in our class cupboard in the changing rooms. In no time we were in the water, with the whole place to ourselves, except for the short-sighted lifeguard.

  Frankie had a great time. He likes to do zombie-fast laps and play Jaws, which is where me or Pradeep lies flat on a float as he swims up from underneath and bumps us off it. He was having such a good time that we left him in the water while we got changed.

  But when we went out to scoop him back into his water bottle . . . he was gone!

  We looked everywhere! In the pile of floats, in the coil of rope that separates the lanes, even in the lost-and-found pile of goggles and flippers! No Frankie.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Pradeep poked the lifeguard, who was having a quick snooze in his chair while the pool was empty. ‘Um . . . our orange pool toy is missing? Did you see anyone in here after we left?’

  ‘Wha . . . ? What?’ said the lifeguard, waking up with a snort. ‘The pool is not responsible for any lost items . . .’

  ‘No!’ I interrupted. ‘It’s not that – we just want to know if you saw anyone else in here?’

  The lifeguard frowned. ‘There was a boy, bigger than you. With a white jacket. He said he was from the Pool Maintenance department.’

  ‘Mark!’ Pradeep and I said together.

  ‘He had a vacuum thing that he used to clean out the pool.’ The lifeguard paused. ‘Only something seemed to get stuck in it pretty quickly and he had to go off and fix the vacuum.’ He scratched his head. ‘You could check with the Pool Maintenance Department to see if they found your toy?’

  ‘There is no Pool Maintenance Department!’ I said. Then I turned to Pradeep. ‘There isn’t a Pool Maintenance Department at our school, is there?’

  ‘There’s just the janitor with a sieve on a stick to pick dead bugs out of the pool,’ he answered.

  ‘Then that means Mark has Frankie!’ I cried.

  The lifeguard looked confused.

  ‘That’s what we call the pool toy,’ Pradeep covered.

  ‘I think I know where we need to start looking,’ I added. ‘If we can find Dr McDoom, we’ll find Mark and Frankie!’

  ‘Look, kids, I hope you find your toy – but do you mind clearing off so I can take a nap before those loud little kids arrive for their lesson?’ The lifeguard waved us away and closed his eyes.

  We headed straight for the science lab. All of the school buildings were open because of McDoom’s talk and the excavation that was still going on in the school’s car park.

  We crept down the hall in stealth mode – eyes peeled for Mark or Dr McDoom. As we approached the lab we could see that the door was propped open and the lights were on. We couldn’t hear any noise, though, except for what might be a filter running and the sound of dripping water.

  Pradeep stood on one side of the door and I stood on the other. I held up my hand and counted down silently with my fingers until I just made a fist. ‘Is the fist zero?’ Pradeep whispered. ‘Does that mean go?’

  ‘Yes, that means go,’ I whispered back. ‘The fist is always zero.’

  ‘Right,’ Pradeep nodded. ‘So do we go now?’

  I sighed. ‘If they were in there they would have heard us by now so let’s just walk in.’

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door to the lab and walked in. It was empty.

  ‘Someone’s been here recently,’ said Pradeep, scuttling into the room behind me. Inside the room were lots of strange scientific instruments and computers that weren’t there during Friday’s science lesson, plus chemicals in test tubes and in specimen jars all over the tables.

  Then we spotted the fish tanks.

  There were two, side by side. In one the water was murky and it looked like there was a fleck of something golden moving inside – but the water in the other tank had an icy, cloudy, cracked look and . . . it had our missing zombie goldfish inside!

  I tapped on the glass. It was freezing cold to the touch. ‘Frankie?’ I cried. ‘It’s us! Are you OK? We’re here to rescue you.’

  Frankie didn’t move.

  Pradeep touched the tank too. Then he pointed at several tubes inside the tank with Frankie. ‘It’s not a fish tank,’ he said. ‘It’s a freezer. They’ve frozen Frankie solid, but why?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter!’ I cried. ‘We’ve got to get him out!’ I managed to find something that looked like a metal skewer and chipped at the ice around Frankie. Luckily, it already seemed to be melting – so it came away without too much trouble. Then I scooped up Frankie, still encased in a football-sized lump of ice, and put him in a glass bowl that Pradeep had found.

  Now I know that for any ordinary goldfish, this would be the end of the line. But Frankie has survived loads of times when Mark tried to make him into a frozen fish-pop in our freezer.

  ‘If we can thaw him out, he’ll be OK, right?’ I asked Pradeep.

  ‘I don’t know what they’ve done to him, Tom.’ Pradeep shook his head. ‘But we’ve got to try.’

  ‘Mwaaaah haaa haaa haaa haaa!’ an evil laugh came from outside the room, but this laugh was in stereo. At the end we could also here a tiny evil ‘Mewwww!’

  ‘That must be Mark and Dr McDoom!’ I whispered to Pradeep.

  ‘It sounds like Mark’s brought his evil kitten, too!’ he muttered back. ‘What are we going to do?’

  Pradeep and I had only just managed to hide behind the open lab door when Mark and Dr McDoom walked in. We could just see Fang, Mark’s evil vampire kitten, glaring up at Dr McDoom from Mark’s Evil Scientist white coat pocket.

  ‘Really, Mark, that went as well as I could have hoped,’ Dr McDoom was saying. ‘I never could have imagined you would have an ideal host specimen on hand like that.’

  ‘I guess we can get rid of the host-fish thing now?’ Mark replied. ‘Fang and I can take care of that for you,’ and he laughed another evil laugh.

  ‘Och no!’ Dr McDoom interrupted. ‘Not yet I’m afraid. We need the host fish in case the cloning doesn’t take first time. It can be rather tricky.’

  They must have looked over at the tanks because the next thing I heard was Mark pounding angrily on a desk. ‘The moron fish is gone! I knew I should have fed it to Fang while I had the chance.’

  ‘It is disappointing, yes, but that’s a wee bit of an overreaction if you ask me,’ said Dr McDoom.

  Through the crack between the door and doorframe, we could see Fang jump out of Mark’s pocket and start licking
at the little drips of water that we had left on the floor when we scooped Frankie out of the freezer tank.

  Pradeep shot me a look which said, ‘If Fang follows the drips . . . they’ll lead her straight to us.’ I crossed my fingers and toes, and even my eyes, that Fang wouldn’t find us. But she kept lapping up the water, getting closer and closer to our hiding place.

  ‘I must say,’ said Dr McDoom’s voice, ‘having a kitten in a sterile laboratory environment is not at all good practice, young man. Especially when the test subjects are fish. Could you please make sure she stays in your pocket and doesn’t contaminate any surfaces?’

  Mark grumbled and scooped up Fang just before she reached the little puddle dripping from Frankie’s bowl and slowly spreading out under the door.

  ‘Pheeew!’ Pradeep and I said in looks to each other.

  Then Dr McDoom almost squealed in delight. ‘Look! Something moved in the cloning tank. Something’s moving in there!’

  ‘Hey, RESULT!’ Mark shouted, and we heard him tap on the tank.

  I peered carefully through the crack. I could see something swimming up to the glass of the murky tank. It looked like a little gold minnow.

  I shot Pradeep a look that said, ‘That dino-fish has more than doubled in size since we’ve been here. It’s gone from a little gold fleck to a minnow!’

  ‘Doesn’t look much like the big fish in the picture,’ Mark said.

  ‘It’s just started its life!’ squealed McDoom in delight. ‘We’ve no idea how big it will get. It’s already growing at an unprecedented rate. We’ll have to observe it closely and run some more tests.’ She sounded as if she was almost bouncing with excitement. ‘I’ll need my sequencing calibration instruments from the van. Would you be a pet and help me carry them up here?’ Dr McDoom asked Mark. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do!’

  Pradeep and I shrank back against the wall as she raced out of the room, leaving Mark alone.

  We heard the sound of him tapping on the tank again. ‘Listen up, little dino-fish. If my excellent evil plan has worked, Dr McDumb will have no idea that you are not only a prehistoric monster fish, but a zombie prehistoric monster fish. You are going to be my new evil pet and gobble up that nasty little zombie goldfish that belongs to my moron little brother . . . and then . . . well, you can zombify whoever I want – so I can do whatever I want! Got it?’

  Just then, Fang belted out a fierce ‘HISSSSSS!’ and jumped out of Mark’s pocket, clawing at the sides of the fish tank, before bounding out of the room and down the stairs.

  ‘Oooooh, sensitive!’ Mark smirked as he followed his kitten out of the room.

  Pradeep and I waited three whole minutes to make sure the coast was clear, then snuck out from behind the door.

  Frankie was mostly thawed out now and beginning to twitch.

  ‘Look, he’s moving!’ I said.

  ‘Quick, warm him up over here,’ Pradeep said, heading for the Bunsen burner. The heat soon turned Frankie’s ice block into a watery slush.

  Frankie shook off the rest of the ice crystals and high-finned us as we poured him back into his water bottle.

  ‘Phew! It’s good to see you back to your old self, Frankie,’ I said.

  ‘And the experiment doesn’t seem to have caused any lasting damage,’ Pradeep added.

  He put Frankie’s bottle down next to the murky fish tank while I turned off the Bunsen burner.

  ‘Look,’ Pradeep said, suddenly grabbing my arm. ‘I think it grew again.’

  There in the tank, through the murky water, we could see the eyes of the dino-fish . . . and it was the same size as Frankie!

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ I cried. We grabbed Frankie and headed out into the hall. ‘We’ll take the back stairs. Come on!’

  ‘They used Frankie to clone the dino-fish!’ Pradeep wheezed as we clattered down the stairs.

  ‘We’ve got to tell somebody!’ I gasped back. ‘That fish could be dangerous. It might have zombie powers like Frankie . . . but even if not –’ I gulped – ‘do you remember the slide of what it will grow up into?’

  ‘Come on,’ Pradeep huffed. ‘The Head Teacher and the janitor are probably both still here somewhere. We can take them to the science lab and show them what Mark and Dr McDoom have done!’

  We finally found Mrs Prentice, the Head Teacher, in the auditorium, along with the slow-motion school janitor. I actually think a claymation version could move faster.

  ‘Come on!’ we kept saying. ‘Dr McDoom is doing some really dangerous experiments in the school science lab!’

  ‘I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for all this,’ Mrs Prentice said as she followed us up the stairs. We had to stop every three steps to wait for the janitor to catch up.

  ‘The only reasonable explanation,’ Pradeep went on, ‘is that Dr McDoom is using an unconventional and highly controversial method of using sampled genetic host materials spliced with harvested prehistoric DNA to create a clone of a Jurassic carp!’

  The Head Teacher looked at Pradeep. ‘You watch too many science-fiction movies, Mr Kumar.’

  Pradeep shook his head in frustration.

  ‘I think what he’s trying to say, Mrs Prentice,’ I butted in, ‘is there is no such thing as too many science-fiction movies for Pradeep.’

  Pradeep nodded.

  ‘I just hope that you boys are not wasting our time,’ she replied sternly.

  We ran the final distance along the hall to the lab and frantically waved them inside. ‘Look!’ I shouted.

  But it was too late. Dr McDoom wasn’t there. Mark wasn’t there. But most importantly, the cloned dino-fish wasn’t there either. All of Dr McDoom’s equipment was gone and the lab was a complete mess. The tank that the dino-fish had been in was smashed to pieces, and there was glass and water all over the floor.

  ‘Oh my word!’ Mrs Prentice shrieked as she walked through the door. ‘Look indeed!’

  ‘But they were here and the fish was in this tank. It was growing and – and . . .’ Pradeep stuttered.

  ‘They must have moved it,’ I interrupted.

  ‘Do you know what I think?’ Mrs Prentice said coldly. ‘I think you boys concocted this ridiculous story to cover up the fact that you were playing in here and broke this fish tank. Destruction of school property, lying, wasting our time,’ she continued. ‘Ah, there you are, Geoffrey,’ she said, as the janitor finally caught up and joined us in the room. ‘I’m sorry to say these boys have left the room in a complete mess.’

  The janitor grumbled something and started shuffling back out of the room – probably to get a mop.

  ‘At least a week’s detention for both of you!’ carried on Mrs Prentice. ‘I will see both of you after school on Monday. Now – get out of here.’

  ‘But . . . but . . .’ I started.

  ‘Come on,’ Pradeep said looking at his watch. ‘We’ve got to meet Mum at the pool now.’ He turned to the Head. ‘I’m sorry we wasted your time, Mrs Prentice. We’ll see you in detention.’

  As we headed down the stairs I opened Frankie’s water bottle. ‘Sorry, Frankie, I thought we could stop them.’ He patted my arm with his fin. I reached into my pocket and pulled out some old green gummy bears and a bit of pond slime in a zippy bag. ‘Here you go,’ I said, dropping them into the bottle with him. ‘You deserve a treat after all you’ve been through.’

  Frankie gobbled everything down and burped loudly.

  ‘Where could they have moved the fish to so quickly?’ I said to Pradeep, wiping the green slime from my hands on my trousers. ‘Do you think they realized we were on to them, or do you think they moved it for another reason?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pradeep frowned. ‘It could be that McDoom needed to take the fish to another lab . . . but at least we got Frankie back and he seems to be OK.’

  By the time we’d got back to the swimming pool, Pradeep’s mum was deep in conversation with one of the other parents, so Pradeep and I took Sami, his three-year-old little
sister, to get changed before her swimming class started. Sami loves seeing Frankie do tricks, so we thought that giving Frankie another dip in the pool would make Sami laugh and cheer up Frankie after his morning of being a frozen science experiment.

  When Sami was ready, we got her green mermaid rubber swim ring and walked her to the side of the pool. As the class wasn’t due to start for another ten minutes, the elderly lifeguard was still having a nap. Quietly I dumped Frankie into the swimming pool and waited for him to pop up and do some tricks. But he didn’t reappear.

  ‘Frankie?’ I called.

  ‘That’s weird,’ said Pradeep.

  We turned away from Sami just for a second to scan the pool for Frankie . . . and that’s when we heard the splash.

  ‘Wheeeeee!’ Sami squealed as she jumped into the pool with her green rubber ring.

  ‘Sami!’ Pradeep shouted to her. ‘Paddle to the side! You’re not supposed to go in the pool without a grown-up!’

  That’s when I spotted something orange moving in the water. And it definitely wasn’t Frankie.

  A large orange fin poked up out of the deep end of the pool, followed by two huge eyes – which were looking right at Sami.

  ‘Sami! Get out now!’ I shouted. ‘It’s the dino-fish!’ Pradeep turned to look just as the dog-sized fish started powering towards his sister.

  In a second Frankie was in front of the Jurassic carp, blocking its path.

  ‘Zombify him, Frankie!’ I called as Pradeep jumped into the water and started dragging Sami to the side of the pool, but the huge fish just reared up and slapped Frankie out of the way with an oversized fin.

  ‘Swishy fishy has fishy friend!’ Sami giggled as Frankie flew across the pool. ‘Me want to play!’

  Pradeep had finally got Sami back to the side of the pool. I knelt down and pulled her out of the water, leaving her green rubber ring floating behind her.