by Mo O’Hara
As I tiptoed into the cafeteria in the basement, I could hear Sami’s voice. I poked my head around the kitchen door and saw her sitting on one of the kitchen counters, with the lunch ladies gathered around. Oh no! What if they were zombie lunch ladies?! I was just about to jump out from behind the door and surprise the zombie lunch ladies when I heard Sami singing, “One, two, three, four, five, once I caught fishy alive…”
The lunch ladies all clapped. Good. They were distracted, now was my best chance for a rescue.
I pounced into the room doing my best ninja stance. “Hiiiii-ya!” I shouted. “I’m here, Sami, I’ll save you!”
They all turned to look at me. At first they gave me the classic lunch-lady stare. The stare that said, “Don’t you even ask me what’s in this lunch because you don’t want to know and anyway I’d have to kill you if I told you.”
Then the lunch lady with the orange hairnet smiled and said, “Oh, this is the little boy whose brother ate his egg this morning. Remember? I told you.” Then they all smiled and shared a look.
“Oh, yes, poor thing,” one said. They nodded sympathetically.
“So have you come to collect our little princess here?” the orange-hairnet lunch lady said as she lifted Sami off the counter. “She wandered in saying something about a fishy so I asked her if she knew any songs about fishies and she just started singing. You’re a good little singer, aren’t you?” she said, patting Sami on the head. The other lunch ladies nodded.
Sami looked at me and giggled.
I was stunned. I had never heard a lunch lady say anything but “More egg?” to me ever. They always looked so scary, but these ones seemed nice. And even better, they weren’t fish zombies.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” I said.
“Oh, isn’t he so polite? Not like some of them,” one of the lunch ladies said. They all nodded again.
“Have any of you looked at a computer this morning?” I asked.
“We don’t need a computer down here, honey,” the hairnet lunch lady answered. “Why?”
I thought about explaining that my Evil Scientist big brother and Pradeep’s Evil Computer Genius big brother had formed an evil society called BBEDLAM that had taken over the school’s computers and, right now, they were planning on turning all the students and staff into fish zombies. But then I changed my mind.
Another announcement came over the loudspeaker. “Everyone seems to be online, so we’ll start the program. I’m uploading the virus—I mean the safety video now,” Sanj said with the robot voice effect he had before. “Keep watching your screens until the film ends.”
After a few seconds I heard the creepy sound of hundreds of students and teachers all mumbling, “Swishy little fishy.” Too late to stop the school from being zombified now. But I could still stop it happening to us and the rest of the world.
“Your first command, my zombie fish slaves,” continued Sanj, “is find that little moron Tom—”
“And his moron fish,” Mark interrupted.
“And his moron fish,” Sanj repeated. “Then bring them to me.”
“Is this something to do with the school play?” one of the lunch ladies asked. “Is it about zombies this year? Seems a bit inappropriate for an elementary school if you ask me.” The other lunch ladies nodded again.
“Are you Tom?” the orange-hairnet lunch lady asked. I nodded this time. “I’m Gladys,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind my saying, but this sounds like trouble.”
“This might sound really weird, but I think there will be lots of hypnotized fish-starey zombies heading down here looking for us. We have to go.” I grabbed Sami’s hand.
“I think you’ll be all right down here. They never remember us lunch ladies. Probably forgot we even exist,” said Gladys, her smile fading a little bit.
“It’ll be better if Sami and I leave,” I said.
I grabbed a serving tray and a spatula from the counter, as I figured we might have to protect ourselves against fish-starey zombies, and led Sami back into the hallway. We ran straight into Madame Bouvard, the French teacher. She was lurching toward us mumbling, “Le swishy petit poisson, le swishy petit poisson…”
I pushed Sami behind me and held up the tray to block Madame Bouvard’s swinging arm. She stopped. She stared at her reflection in the shiny metal surface and started to moan, like Mark had done in the boys’ bathroom when Frankie hypnotized him. It seemed that, somehow, seeing their own zombie stare reflected back stunned the fish zombies. This could be a way to fight them off!
We ran back into the kitchen and pulled Gladys to one side. “I’ve got a plan, but we need all the lunch ladies to help.” Gladys looked confused now.
I tried to explain. “We need to use the shiny metal food trays to reflect the zombie goldfish stares back at the kids and teachers who’ve been zombified.”
“I always said those trays were clean enough to see yourself in,” Gladys said with pride, “but I’m not sure how the other lunch ladies will cope. It won’t be good for Betty’s blood pressure and Carol was just saying that she felt a migraine coming on.”
I looked at Sami and then at Gladys. We can’t do this on our own, I thought. We need a secret weapon.
Just then the pipes above the sink started gurgling and then the tap turned. Frankie shot out in a swoosh of water, landing in the big stainless steel sink. The other lunch ladies screamed. Gladys shouted, “Quiet, ladies! Haven’t you ever seen a fish in a kitchen before?”
Frankie jumped out of the sink and into a pitcher of orange Kool-Aid that was on the counter. I picked up the jug. “Frankie, you’re OK!” I said, so relieved to see him. Frankie swished his tail against my hand to give me a fishy high five.
Then I heard footsteps on the ceiling above us. Lots of footsteps. The zombies must have heard the lunch ladies’ screams. I ran over to the kitchen doors and shoved a broomstick between the handles to block the door. The lunch ladies stared at me.
“I saw them do it once on TV,” I said, and they nodded.
Sami squeezed my hand. Frankie’s eyes were bright green now and he thrashed around wildly. Gladys peered into the jug.
“Don’t look him in the eye,” I warned, “or else you’ll get the zombie stare, like all the fish zombies upstairs. Only a little better, because if Frankie hypnotizes you, then he can control what you do, and not BBEDLAM.” She started to look confused again.
“So the goldfish can zombie people too, but in a good way?” she said.
Then a giant searchlight went off inside my head, pointing at the lightbulb with a single brilliant idea.
“Yes! That’s what Frankie can do. And that’s exactly what we should do!” I shouted. “You’re a genius, Gladys!”
I carried Frankie over to the other lunch ladies and asked them to look into his eyes until they were all zombified. Now Frankie could control them (without increasing Betty’s blood pressure or giving Carol a migraine, or freaking any of them out any more than they already were). I whispered the plan to Frankie, about bouncing back the zombie stare with the trays and then re-hypnotizing the zombies to bring them under his control. He made all the lunch ladies pick up shiny metal trays and get ready for battle.
The footsteps had reached the stairs and there was banging on the cafeteria doors. For all I knew, Pradeep could be a zombie by now. I lifted Frankie’s jug up to Gladys so she could get zombified too.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Someone has to keep their wits about them. Besides, I’ve seen more zombie films than you’ve had hot lunches. Never look them in the eye. Never surrender.” She winked at me and held up her silver tray like a shield.
Suddenly the fish zombies came bursting through the kitchen doors, all chanting, “Swishy little fishy.”
One by one, the lunch ladies used their trays to stun them. Then I ran over with Frankie so he could zombify them again. Slowly we were getting more of the kids and teachers on our side and they were picking up trays and joining the fight.
My walkie-talkie started to click:
LONG SHORT,
LONG SHORT,
SHORT SHORT LONG LONG,
LONG SHORT,
LONG SHORT,
SHORT SHORT LONG LONG.
It went on that long because I didn’t have a hand free to answer it. I handed Frankie’s jug to Sami.
Pradeep was clicking “Ring Around the Rosie,” which meant … he was in big trouble.
“We’ve got to help Pradeep!” I shouted to Gladys as she held up two trays and stunned both the school secretaries at once.
“Who?” she asked.
“Choc-Rice-Pops-on-toast boy!” I answered.
“Oh, I worry about his diet,” she sighed. “Go—and take little princess with you. We’ll keep stunning these zombies till you get back with the goldfish.”
I looked around. There was no way we could get past the fish zombies and escape up the stairs. Mr. Walker, the PE teacher, was taking up the whole doorway, and none of the lunch ladies was tall enough to un-zombie him. I had to get to Pradeep. Then I spotted the tiny door behind the kitchen counter.
“What’s that?” I asked Gladys.
“Oh, that’s an old dumbwaiter from years back. When they used to have big events in the hall upstairs, they used that to send up trays and plates and things.”
I opened the little door. It was small but just big enough for Sami to fit in. At least I could get her out safely, and then I’d have to run the gauntlet of fish zombies and hope for the best. I helped Sami crawl into the little elevator. At first she clung to my hand, but she let go when I handed her the jug with Frankie inside.
“You take Frankie upstairs and I’ll come and find you,” I said. I closed the door and pulled the ropes to hoist her up. I could hear a muffled “Wheeeee!” as she rose in the tiny elevator.
Now I just had to get past Mr. Walker. I had to out-PE the PE teacher. I ran toward him and ducked left, ducked right, and then dived between his legs and out the other side. Yes! I swerved out of the reach of Mrs. Fletcher, the librarian, and then leaped past the Mackenzie twins. This was just like playing Zombie Hero Defender on the computer, but with lots of “swishy fishy” chanting instead of cool laser-blasting sound effects.
I raced up the stairs and ran along the hallway to the assembly hall, where the dumbwaiter comes out. I opened the little hatch but it was empty. No Sami. No Frankie.
The giant whiteboard in the assembly hall booted up again. A voice came out of the speakers: “Hey! Moron!” It was Mark this time. “Guess who just dropped in to see us?”
An image flickered onto the whiteboard. It showed Sami wedged into the science lab trash can. That kid has a bad habit of getting stuck in trash cans. Then the camera panned up and across. There was Frankie in his plastic jug of orange Kool-Aid. Above him was a whole series of bubbling test tubes and glass pipes carrying glowing green liquid. The liquid was bubbling up in a beaker at the end and when it reached the top it would spill over—onto Frankie.
The camera turned to Sanj, sitting at his laptop. He was looking straight into the lens. “I’ve now set the countdown clock. In exactly five minutes the BBEDLAM Zombie Fish Virus will upload onto the Internet. Then it will spread to every computer worldwide and everyone will see that I’m more gifted than anyone at that stupid gifted school.” He did his sinister wheeze. “Just try and stop me, little moron!” he added.
Just then some kid fish zombies staggered into the hall, and Pradeep was one of them.
As they got closer I could see he had a zombified Darren Schultz on his left and the zombified Mackenzie twins on his right. There was no way I could take them all. If only I had a mirror … I ran to the door and headed to the boys’ bathroom. The zombies followed me. I stood in front of the mirrors as the zombies got closer. Darren was the first one to stand still, stunned. Then the Mackenzie twins stopped too. Pradeep looked to his left and right.
“Oh, I see you reversed the effects of the zombie stare by forcing eye contact with the opposite mirror reflection. That’s cool, Tom,” Pradeep said.
“Is that what I’m doing?” I said. “Hey, wait, you’re not a fish zombie after all.”
“No, I was looking for you to warn you about Sanj putting the virus on the Internet when Darren and the twins followed me. I couldn’t blow my cover or they would have taken me prisoner.”
“We have to get up to the science lab, Pradeep,” I said. “They’ve got Frankie and Sami!”
“On the double,” Pradeep said, already heading for the stairs.
When we got to the science lab, I looked over at the countdown clock on Sanj’s laptop: 02:43. There were only two minutes and forty-three seconds left to stop them.
Pradeep winked at me outside the door and then put on his zombie stare. He grabbed me by the arms and pulled me into the room.
“Swishy little fishy,” he droned.
“Moron!” Mark yelled. “Awesome. And you’re too late. Ha! The fish is about to be toxic toast.”
“And you get to see my computer virus released on the world in two minutes and eleven seconds,” Sanj said.
Pradeep staggered nearer to Frankie, holding me tight like I was his prisoner. I pretended to struggle.
Sami looked over at us as she tried to squirm out of the trash can. She smiled at me and then stuck her tongue out at Pradeep, blowing a raspberry. “Ptbbllllllllbbbbbbbbllllbbbbbb! Naughty Pradeep,” she said.
Sanj grinned at me. “I think it’s so fitting that my stupid little moron brother, your little moron best friend, is the one who turned you in. It’s just so sad. I mean, he didn’t even put up a fight or anything.…” Sanj babbled on and didn’t even notice that Pradeep was zombie-walking over to the laptop cord, which was hanging over the other side of the table. Pradeep slowly reached out and yanked the cord, pulling the laptop out of Sanj’s reach and into his own hands.
“Stupid little moron, huh?” Pradeep said and started typing. “Then how come I memorized your super-long ‘un-hackable’ password just by watching you type it? Now I can shut this thing down.” Pradeep’s fingers flew over the keyboard. Mark and Sanj both raced to stop him.
I grabbed Frankie’s plastic jug and threw it at Mark. It clocked him right on the side of the head and knocked him off balance. He turned back to me. “You just did my job for me, moron, getting rid of the fish! Now I’ll get rid of you.”
Sanj snatched the computer from Pradeep’s hands and pushed him to the floor. You know, it is so unfair that no matter how much we outsmart our evil big brothers, they are still two feet taller and usually able to squash us if they want to. I watched Pradeep getting squashed and knew my own squashing was just a matter of time. “Forty-five seconds left and still five numbers to enter on my password code,” Sanj gloated. “There’s no way to stop me now. I’ll have a whole world of zombie fish slaves! You lose, I win, na-na na-na-na.”
“And you so lose!” Mark said as he caught up with me and grabbed me around my arms so I couldn’t move.
I looked Mark right in the eye, and that’s when I released my secret weapon. I opened my mouth and Frankie jumped out, slapping his tail hard across Mark’s face until he fell backward into the mosquito net I’d been trapped under earlier. I quickly rolled the net around him as Frankie fell to the floor and skidded along its watery surface, skating toward Sanj.
“Look out, Frankie!” Pradeep yelled as Sanj stomped his feet, trying to squash Frankie. But Frankie bounced off the top of Sanj’s boot, leaped over his head and landed on the laptop.
Ten seconds, read the clock. Frankie flipped around on the keyboard, thwacking keys with his tail and dodging Sanj’s fist. The clock ticked on:
7 …
6 …
5 …
Thwack, thwack, thwack on the keys.
4 …
3 …
2 …
Tap tap, tap.
1 …
And then it froze.
Sanj stared at the screen. “Impossible,” he sa
id. “How could a fish type in code?” Sanj collapsed on the floor talking to himself.
“Yeah, you’d have to be a stupid little moron to be outwitted by a couple of little kids and a fish,” I said. “Right, Frankie?”
That’s when I saw the goldfish.
“Fishy not swishy?!” Sami struggled in the trash can, pointing to Frankie lying motionless on the laptop keyboard.
“No, Frankie, you can’t!” I said. “Quick, we need to get him in some water!”
Pradeep ran to get the jug off the floor and filled it from the tap.
I gently placed Frankie in the water as Pradeep pulled Sami out of the trash can. She hugged him around the knees.
Sanj was still mumbling to himself on the floor. “How could he do that? How could the fish figure it out?”
Sami toddled over to Sanj and dumped the trash can on his head. “Naughty Sanj!” she said.
The lunch ladies who Frankie had hypnotized burst into the science lab with Gladys right behind them. “I don’t know what they’re doing,” she said. “Betty just put some eggs on a plate and Carol grabbed a moldy bread roll and they headed up here. We’ve stunned all the teachers and students now anyway. Although nobody can reach Mr. Walker. Ethel and Mildred have him cornered behind the salad bar—”
“I think Frankie must have summoned them somehow,” I interrupted, “and sent them a message with what he needs. Look!”
“Oh, he doesn’t look good, does he? Poor fish. Looks famished. No wonder he wanted eggs and bread, but why the moldy ones?”
“They’re green!” Pradeep and I said at the same time. I realized I talk at the same time as a lot of people. Gotta work on that. I checked no one else was about to speak before I added, “He only likes green food.”
I took the eggs and moldy rolls and crumbled them into the jug. Frankie shook slightly, then his mouth opened and closed. He started gobbling up egg bits and moldy bread. He looked up at me from his jug, winked, and swished his tail.