Zombie Bums from Uranus

by Andy Griffiths

In fact it was furious.

  Furious at having had its dream of total bumination of the Earth ripped from its grasp at the last moment.

  Furious at all the bums on Earth who had let it down by abandoning the bumcano just when it was about to blow and knock out every human being on the planet.

  But, above all, the Great White Bum was furious at Zack Freeman, the chief architect of the predicament it now found itself in: hurtling through space—half dead, on fire and too weak to stop itself.

  ‘How could I have been so dumb?’ it wondered aloud. ‘I should never have trusted those Earth bums—not only are they weak and stupid, but they have minds of their own. What I need is an army that won’t question me. An army that will obey me. An army as ruthless as myself. But where in the univarse am I going to find such a force?’

  The Great White Bum shrugged sadly and blinked.

  Then it blinked again.

  Although the light from the sun was very weak, it could see something in the distance.

  A planet.

  A blue planet.

  For a moment the Great White Bum was confused, mistaking the planet for Earth . . . but as it drew closer it realised that it wasn’t Earth at all.

  It did, however, look strangely familiar.

  Slowly it dawned on the Great White Bum that it had been here before.

  Ahead of it was Uranus—one of the planets that we know on Earth as a ‘gas giant’, and not without good reason. The planet Uranus consists almost entirely of gas—a large proportion of which is methane, responsible for giving the planet its distinctive blue colour.

  But Uranus had not always been this way.

  Many millennia ago the Great White Bum had arrived on Uranus and encouraged the bums of the peaceful Uranusian population to rise up and destroy their owners. But although initially successful, the plan had later backfired. Freed from their owners, the Uranusian bums had multiplied out of control. In the process they had overwhelmed their planet with enormous clouds of gas, gradually choking all forms of life with lethal amounts of methane. Realising that they would be the next to go, the Uranusian bums fled their dying planet—but they were doomed. As they entered the depths of space they were snap-frozen dead, their carcases forming nine thin rings around the planet. At that point the Great White Bum—impervious to both the deadly methane and the ravages of interstellar travel—slipped silently across the solar system towards a small blue planet . . . and began the long, slow process of world bumination all over again.

  But that was then.

  This was now.

  And as the Great White Bum got closer to Uranus it began to smile.

  It realised that not only did Uranus offer a means of halting its freefall through space, but that its rings could also provide the very army of bums it needed. With this army it could return to Earth and finish what it had started with the bumcano.

  As the Great White Bum hurtled towards Uranus, it was well aware of the univarsal law of physics known to bums, bum-fighters and schoolchildren throughout the univarse:

  Methane + Flame = Explosion

  Only in this case the Great White Bum realised it would be a slightly different, slightly bigger equation:

  WHOLE PLANET FULL OF METHANE

  + Flame

  = REALLY HUGE EXPLOSION

  Just exactly how really huge this explosion would be the Great White Bum had no way of knowing, but it did know that the explosion would create an incredible stench.

  A stench, no doubt, that would be smelly enough to wake the dead . . .

  At that moment James and Judi Freeman, one of Earth’s top husband and wife bum-fighting teams, were leaning over a table in the middle of their intergalactic bum-mobile, about to dissect one of the bums they had just retrieved from the Uranusian rings.

  James and Judi had been sent to Uranus by E-Mission Control on a top-secret E-mission to take a closer look at the rings surrounding Uranus. According to images sent back to Earth by the space probe Voyager 2, on its February 1986 flypast, the rings appeared to be made up of bums.

  ‘Bum scalpel,’ said James.

  Judi picked one up from the tray beside her and placed it in her husband’s trembling hand.

  James Freeman wiped small droplets of perspiration from his brow as he studied the bum on the table in front of him.

  He’d dissected many bums in the course of his bum-fighting career, but never one as strange as this. It was a blueish-black colour with a jelly-like consistency. It reminded him of the large domed jellyfish that he used to find washed up on the beach when he was a kid.

  ‘Are you sure we should be doing this?’ said Judi.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ James said.

  Judi frowned. ‘But our orders were just to take a closer look. To retrieve a sample specimen if possible. E-Mission Control didn’t say anything about dissection.’

  James drew in his breath and looked at his wife. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But then E-Mission Control didn’t know whether it would be possible to retrieve one in the first place. Don’t you realise the importance of what we have here? The magnitude of our discovery? This is the first proof of extraterrestrial bum life! It’s our duty to find out more about it before we take the risk of bringing it back. It could contaminate the whole planet!’

  ‘What about our bum-mobile?’ said Judi. ‘What about us? What about our son?’

  ‘Zack is not here,’ said James, patiently.

  ‘That’s my point exactly!’ said Judi. ‘He’s back on Earth. All alone.’

  ‘He’s not alone,’ James said. ‘His grandmother is looking after him.’

  Judi snorted. ‘Sometimes I wonder who’s looking after who,’ she said. ‘What if something happens to us?’

  ‘Relax,’ said James. ‘The bum is dead. It’s a routine dissection. Nothing more.’

  Judi shook her head. ‘I wish Silas hadn’t been called back to Earth. He’d know what to do.’

  ‘I know what he’d do,’ said James, impatient to begin the dissection. ‘Exactly the same thing that we’re about to do. Let’s just get it done and get back to Earth. We’ll be home before you know it.’

  Judi shrugged. She knew it was pointless to argue with James when he got like this.

  She pulled her bum-mask up over her mouth and nose. James did the same.

  He tried to steady his shaking hand.

  It wasn’t so much fear that was making his hand shake as the awesome sense of occasion. It wasn’t every day you got the chance to dissect an alien bum. In fact it had never been done before. By anyone. Ever. He was about to make history.

  James positioned the point of the scalpel at the top of the bum’s crack and made an incision.

  ‘That’s one small cut for a bum . . .’ he announced. ‘One giant cut for—’

  ‘Just get on with it!’ said Judi, impatient for the dissection to be over so they could start for home. They’d been away too much lately, and she was growing tired of it. Under the pretext of playing in the wind section of a symphony orchestra, they completed three or four secret bum-fighting E-missions each year. But she missed her little boy. He wasn’t even that little anymore. He was twelve, and growing up fast. Although their work was vital to the security of the world, she was worried about him. Twelve was a difficult age. She wanted to be there for him in case his bum ran away like hers and James’s had when they were the same age. She wouldn’t have worried quite so much if her son had inherited a little of their bum-fighting talent, but he’d failed the entrance exam for the Junior Bum-fighters’ League three times. Whatever his talents were, she figured, they obviously didn’t include bum-fighting.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said James, frowning. ‘I’ve never seen a bum do that before.’

  ‘Do what?’ said Judi, leaning forward.

  ‘Look,’ said James, making another incision in the strange blue bum. ‘You can’t see where I just cut.’

  James Freeman put his scalpel down, wiped his brow and shook his he
ad.

  The flesh on the bum appeared to have repaired itself instantly.

  ‘Let me try,’ said Judi, ‘after all, I did get a B plus for bum dissection at the Bum-fighting Academy.’

  James made a face. ‘Okay, hot shot,’ he said, handing her the scalpel.

  Judi ran the scalpel expertly down the length of the crack and around the bum, neatly severing it in two with a quick flick of her wrist.

  ‘Nice one,’ said James, nodding approvingly and prodding one of the halves with his finger. He had to resist an urge to pick it up and throw it, just like he had done with the pieces of jellyfish all those years ago on the beach.

  But as Judi and James studied the two halves, their eyes grew wide.

  Judi grabbed James’s sleeve.

  ‘Look!’ she said.

  ‘Wow!’ said James.

  Right in front of their eyes, the two cheeks slid towards each other and formed back into one bum.

  ‘I thought you said it was dead,’ said Judi.

  ‘It is!’ said James, picking up the scalpel again. ‘But its flesh still retains the power to repair itself. Do you realise the possible applications of flesh like this for bum-fighters? You could be blown apart by an atomic bum and then just put yourself back together again!’

  Judi shuddered, reaching out to stop James from cutting into the bum again. ‘No,’ she said in a low voice.

  James looked at her, suddenly realising how worried she was.

  ‘James,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s not safe.’

  ‘How can it not be safe?’ said James.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Judi. ‘But it’s too weird. I say we get rid of it. It’s too dangerous. We don’t even know if it’s dead.’

  ‘Of course it’s dead,’ said James. ‘There’s no pulse, there’s no electrical signals . . .’

  ‘It may not be alive,’ said Judi, picking up the bum and carrying it over to the emergency expulsion chute, ‘but it’s certainly not dead.’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ said James, moving around the table to try to grab the bum from her. ‘Together, we can make history!’

  ‘Yes, but at what price?’ said Judi. ‘We’re just regular bum-fighters. This is way out of our league! Let E-Mission Control send a specialist team up here.’

  Judi was about to press the button on the chute when her attention was caught by a fiery object—a long way from the bum-mobile—passing through the innermost ring of Uranus and heading straight for the planet’s surface.

  ‘What in the univarse is that?’ said Judi.

  ‘Looks like a comet,’ said James, pressing his nose against the glass.

  ‘A comet?’ Judi said. ‘Out here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said James. ‘Whatever it is, though . . . it’s on fire . . . and Uranus is full of methane!’

  ‘So is yours,’ said Judi, ‘but I don’t go on about it.’

  James ignored her. ‘Uranus is about to explode!’ he shouted.

  ‘How dare you!’ said Judi, raising her hand to slap his cheek.

  ‘I mean the planet!’ said James as he grabbed her hand and pulled her to the floor of the bum-mobile.

  For a moment there was complete silence.

  Then a massive explosion rocked the ship.

  Had they been looking out of the porthole instead of lying down with their faces pressed to the floor, they would have seen a rare and extraordinary sight.

  The explosion of a planet.

  But while they might not have seen it, they certainly felt it and smelt it.

  A blast of intense light, heat and stench rocked their spacecraft.

  As Judi flattened herself against the floor of the bum-mobile, her only thought was for their son Zack, and how sad it was that she would never see him again.

  She closed her eyes and waited to die.

  Judi Freeman’s nostrils burned. Her lungs burned. Her face and hands and whole body burned as the floor of the bum-mobile became a super-heated hotplate.

  She choked and coughed and cursed.

  But she didn’t die.

  She lay there for a few moments, trying to regain her senses, and then realised with a start that the bum wasn’t in her hands anymore.

  She stood up and looked around the bum-mobile. She turned to James, who was climbing unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘James!’ she said. ‘The bum! It’s gone . . .’

  James, however, didn’t answer. He just stared at her, no expression whatsoever on his face.

  Judi walked over to him and shook his shoulders. ‘James?’ she said ‘Are you all right?’

  But James’s only response was to grab her arm.

  ‘Stop kidding around, James, this is serious!’ said Judi, pulling her arm away from him.

  But James didn’t stop. He grabbed her arm again and pulled it towards his mouth. Judi frantically searched behind her for a weapon. Her hands closed on a toilet plunger. Not ideal, but it would have to do. She raised it high in the air.

  ‘If you’re kidding you’d better stop now!’ she yelled. ‘Or I’ll hit you!’

  James sank his teeth into her arm.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ said Judi as she brought the plunger down hard on James’s head, ‘but that’s definitely NOT funny!’

  James released her arm, toppled forwards and stumbled into the wall.

  Judi gasped.

  His bum was enormous. At least twice as big as normal. In a flash she grasped what had happened. Somehow—in all the confusion of the explosion—the Uranusian bum had managed to attach itself to James and was making him behave very strangely . . . like a . . . zombie! But how? she wondered. Despite its ability to repair itself, the bum had been dead. At least it had been dead before the explosion.

  James, on his knees, turned and grabbed her ankle. Judi lost her balance and crashed to the floor. James pulled her towards him, saliva dripping from his lips as he raised her ankle up to his mouth.

  Judi brought the plunger down on his head again.

  James dropped her leg.

  Judi jumped up, and while James was still facedown, planted the cup of the plunger in the middle of his oversized backside and with one foot in the middle of his back, began to push and pull the plunger with all her might.

  James contorted his face, writhed in agony and screamed.

  But Judi willed herself to ignore him. She’d fought bums for too long to fall for a trick like that.

  It wasn’t James screaming, she told herself, it was the bum.

  Then, as James’s cries reached a crescendo, she ripped the parasitic bum from his body. It flew up into the air and splattered against the roof.

  Judi slumped against the wall of the bum-mobile, exhausted. She sighed. At least it was over.

  But any relief she felt was short-lived. As she watched, the pieces of bum-blubber slid silently across the floor towards each other, and within seconds had reformed into a new bum.

  A bum that appeared to be very much alive.

  James was silent.

  Judi kicked him.

  ‘Wake up, James!’ she said. ‘Please!’

  Before Judi could do anything, the zombie bum flew across the cabin at her.

  Judi stepped out of the way, but the bum hit the wall behind her and bounced off it.

  Judi tried to whack the bum with the plunger, but it was too quick. ‘James!’ she screamed as the zombie bum latched onto her bum. ‘Help me!’

  James was still lying on the floor. He groaned and looked up. ‘Judi?’ he said.

  Immediately Judi felt an enormous surge of hunger. She was more hungry than she’d ever been before. She was mad with hunger. She could have eaten anything. Even, she realised with horror as she lost consciousness, even James . . .

  Judi, now completely zombie-bummified, reached out for her husband.

  James grabbed her. ‘Hold on!’ he yelled, hitting the bum-mobile hatch door release. Normally to do such a thing, while the bum-mobile was still in space, would have been suicidal
. He remembered well the lecture on the dangers of space that Silas Sterne had given at the Bum-fighting Academy all those years ago: ‘Exposed to the vacuum of space, your body fluids would quickly boil. Bubbles would form in your blood vessels and body tissues, causing them to rupture. All the gases inside your body would expand. You would become unconscious in about fifteen seconds. You would have permanent brain damage in about four minutes. That’s if your skin wasn’t punctured by small, high-speed particles travelling through space. Or you weren’t instantly snap-frozen in temperatures as low as minus 100 degrees, or turned into galactic fried human in temperatures as high as 120 degrees in the full glare of the sun.’

  But as suicidal as such an action might have been under normal circumstances, these were definitely not normal circumstances. In all their training, not one of their instructors had ever mentioned zombie bums from Uranus, let alone given the students any information or clues about how to fight them.

  Luckily James was a fast learner. He gripped the handle of the hatch with one hand, and held on to Judi with the other.

  A roaring sound filled the cabin as all the air in the bum-mobile was sucked out by the powerful vacuum created by the sudden depressurisation.

  It sucked everything that wasn’t tied down out of the bum-mobile. Including Judi. She was half out of the ship. James could feel his grip slipping. And worse, he could feel his temperature rising. It was becoming extremely difficult to think. All he knew was that he had to hold on . . . had to hold on until the bum was sucked off Judi’s body.

  Finally, just as James was about to lose consciousness, he saw the bum fly out of a hole in the back of Judi’s spacesuit and off into space. He wrenched her back into the ship and pushed the button to secure the hatch door.

  As the air rushed back into the cabin, both James and Judi breathed huge sighs of relief, not to mention life-restoring doses of oxygen.

  ‘I guess I owe you an apology,’ said James, when he’d recovered enough to speak.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Judi. ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘You saved mine first,’ he reminded her.