by David Lubar
I figured there wouldn’t be any real harm in eating some hot wings. And he was right. Five hundred dollars was a lot of money. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Great. This is just the start, you know. I’ll bet there are all sorts of ways a zombie can make money.”
“I’m not a zombie.”
“Hey, that reminds me of a joke. What’s a zombie’s favorite weather forecast?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cloudy with a chance of brain.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Yes, it is. Hey—brain showers! That’s totally hilarious.” To prove he was right, he started laughing.
Mookie was still laughing when we reached Van Houghton Street, where the new SortaFresh Discount Supermarket had opened last week. There were a couple tables set up in a corner of the parking lot with folding chairs behind them, and more folding chairs lined up in front of them for spectators.
A short line of people were there already, waiting to sign up for the contest. Short—but very wide. Most of them had huge stomachs. I felt like a toothpick wandering among beach balls. When I reached the table, the guy in charge stared at me for a minute. “You know this line is for the hot-wing eating contest?”
“I know.”
The guy shrugged and pushed the clipboard toward me. I wrote down my name, address, and age, then took a seat and waited for the contest to start. It looked like there were about twenty people, including one guy who must have weighed close to four hundred pounds.
The judges placed a plate of wings in front of each of us, along with a big glass of water.
Mookie took a seat in the front row. “Don’t drink anything. That will just take up room. Concentrate on the chicken.”
“Good idea.” When they rang the starting bell, I grabbed a wing, bit off the meat from one side, and swallowed it without chewing. I figured that would save time. I glanced at the guy next to me. He was already on his second wing—which wasn’t surprising, since he was grabbing them two at a time. I’d have to hurry to keep up.
It felt strange to eat—especially since my taste buds had been sort of numbed ever since I’d been splashed with Hurt-Be-Gone. But I got a bit of the flavor. Even if I hadn’t been able to taste the wings at all, I could tell they were hot from the groans and screams that rose around me.
I tuned all of that out and concentrated on eating. Soon enough, my first plate was empty. By now, I was about even with the guy next to me. I guess he’d slowed down. They put another plate in front of me. I kept biting and swallowing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone get up and stagger away from the table.
I realized I wasn’t sweating, either. Hot sauce used to make me sweat.
By the third plate, the guy next to me was still going, but I could tell I was beating him. The big guy two seats away had a stack of empty plates. I kept at it until the bell rang again.
“Time!” someone shouted.
I dropped the half-eaten wing I was holding, wiped my hands on a paper towel, and slumped back in my seat. As I did that, my pants popped open. The button shot off and smacked against the edge of the table. I stared down at my gut. It was bulging pretty badly. But that was okay. I’d force all that chicken out of my stomach soon enough.
The judges moved from person to person, weighing all the plates and writing stuff down on clipboards.
Mookie came up to me right after they left. “You were awesome.”
“Thanks. Anyone else eat this much?”
“No way. Nobody came close.” He pointed to the judges’ table. “Hang on—I think they’re going to announce the winner.”
A guy wearing a SortaFresh apron picked up a microphone. “Okay, folks, the results are in. We have winners to announce.”
He walked toward me. I could already feel the money in my hands. I wondered whether they’d give it to me in hundred-dollar bills.
“With a total of sixty-three wings, Nathan Abercrombie wins the youth division and a twenty-five-dollar SortaFresh gift certificate.”
“What?” I shouted. Youth division?
He ignored me and walked over to the four hundred-pound guy. “And our adult division winner, with a total of fifty-seven wings, is Bubba ‘Big Gut’ Chompsketski. Let’s have a hand for him.”
People clapped. The manager handed Bubba a check. I jumped out of my seat. That is, I tried. The extra weight in my gut slowed me down and threw me off balance so my jump was more like a lurch and a stumble.
“That’s not fair!” I shouted at the manager. “I beat him.”
The manager shrugged and tapped some stuff written at the bottom of the entry form. “Rules are rules, kid. Come back when you’re eighteen.”
“Hey, look on the bright side,” Mookie said. “At least you got twenty-five dollars.”
“Yeah, in a stinking gift certificate. Come on—let’s get this chicken out of me.”
I took two steps, then clutched at my pants as they fell. Luckily, I caught them before they hit the ground. Unluckily, they’d dropped as far as my knees. I yanked them up, then handed Mookie the gift certificate. “Go see if they sell rope, or belts, or something.”
“You bet.” Mookie snatched the certificate from my hand and dashed into the store.
As I sat and waited, a shadow fell over me from the side. Something was blocking the sun.
“You did good, kid.”
I looked up. “Thanks.”
Bubba swatted me on the back with a meaty paw that was pretty heavily covered in hot sauce. “You could really make a name for yourself. It’s not just wings. There’s a whole lot of contests out there. Oysters, pies, pizza, deep-fried onions . . .” He let out a small burp, licked his lips, then said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”
It was at least fifteen more minutes before Mookie came back, carrying a bulging plastic bag.
“They have belts?” I asked.
“Nope. But they had pet stuff. I got you a leash.” He pulled it out of the bag and handed it to me.
“Thanks.” I threaded the leash through my belt loops, then tied it. “What’s in there?”
“I got us a snack for later.” Mookie opened the bag and showed me a bunch of chocolate bars, pretzels, and licorice whips.
“I’m not eating anything else,” I said. “I don’t eat food anymore. Remember.”
“Oops. Sorry. I forgot. That’s okay, I’ll eat them for you. That’s what friends are for.”
“Speaking of eating—come on. Let’s get this stuff out of me.”
I took a step and watched to make sure my pants wouldn’t fall. They stayed up, but they looked like they were ready to burst.
We walked over to the playground behind Borloff Lower Elementary School. The way my gut was pulling me, I felt I was going downhill the whole time. When we were halfway there, a bird swooped down toward me, aimed right at my head. Oh no, not another BUM spy going out of control.
“Duck!” I shouted.
Mookie and I ducked. Or at least, I ducked as much as I could with a gut full of wings. The bird shot past me and hit the trunk of a tree. As it dropped to the ground, I realized I hadn’t heard a clang.
“I think it’s real,” I said. The bird shook its head like it was dazed, flapped its wings, and flew off, zigzagging through the air.
“Definitely weird,” Mookie said.
“But definitely not a spy from BUM,” I said.
When we got to the monkey bars, I climbed up a couple rungs, then hung down from my knees.
“Get it over with,” I said.
Mookie leaned forward and pressed against my stomach. I opened my mouth wide so the food could shoot out more easily.
“Nothing’s happening,” Mookie said.
“Press harder”
“Urrrfff.” Mookie leaned into me. I could tell he was using all his strength.
“I think it’s stuck.” He dropped his arms and staggered away from me.
“No. It can’t be stuck.” I imagined all that chicken
jammed in my stomach. Sixty-three wings. “Try again.”
It didn’t work any better the second time.
“It’s no use.” Mookie’s face was red, and sweat ran down his cheeks. He looked like he was the one full of hot wings. I guess he’d really given it a hard try.
“We’d better call Abigail,” I said. “She’ll know what to do.”
13
Gut Instincts
This doesn’t sound good,” Abigail said. “Meet me at my place.”
Abigail’s place was the Comfy Craven Motor Lodge and Bait Shop, on Route 49 right outside of town. She and her mom were staying there while they waited to move into their new house.
Mookie and I cut through the field by the mall, which got us to a road that ran behind the motel. We walked around to the front, where a long row of doors stretched out from the office. Abigail was in number fifteen.
“This is so cool,” Mookie said when Abigail answered our knock. “I love motels.”
“Me, too. I feel like Eloise,” Abigail said.
Mookie and I stared at each other. I didn’t have a clue.
“Eloise is from a picture book,” Abigail said. “She lives in the Plaza Hotel. That’s not important right now. We need to deal with this.”
She reached out and poked my stomach. “Ohmygosh. What did you eat?”
“Sixty-three chicken wings,” I said.
“They’re sort of jammed in there,” Mookie said.
“Did you forget to chew?” Abigail asked.
“There wasn’t really time,” I told her. “I was afraid Bubba would beat me.”
“Bubba?” Abigail asked.
“He lives in the Plaza Hotel,” Mookie said.
Abigail ignored him. “We need to liquefy the food.”
“How are we going to do that?” I asked.
“I know!” Mookie said. “My mom bought this thing from the TV shopping channel. It’s like a blender on a stick. You put it in a pot of food and make soup. She makes all kinds of soup now. We had hot dog and relish soup last week. Anyhow, we could stick it down your throat.”
“Right—and blend my guts into soup. No thank you.” I hoped Abigail had a better idea.
She tugged at the ends of her hair and looked up toward the clouds. I waited. Finally, she said, “Normally, stomach acid does the trick. Along with saliva. I suspect you aren’t producing any stomach acid.”
“Can we get some?” Mookie asked.
“We could,” Abigail said. “We could even make something like it in a chem lab. But that would be dangerous. A living stomach can protect itself against acid. Otherwise it would digest itself. But I don’t think Nathan’s stomach is producing any protection. The acid would eat right through it, and then through the rest of his body.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” I pictured acid burning holes through my stomach and running down my legs. Even if I couldn’t feel any pain, I definitely didn’t want to give birth to a pile of chicken wings.
“You’re right—it wouldn’t be good at all,” Abigail said. “But there are gentler ways to deal with proteins. We can use enzymes. Meat tenderizer would be a good start. And papaya extract.”
Abigail ran inside, tore a piece of paper out of her notebook, and started writing. After a minute, she said, “Come on. We’ve got some shopping to do.”
“I just went shopping,” Mookie said. He held up the bag. “Have some chocolate.”
Now Abigail heard him loud and clear. She reached into the bag and pulled out a bar.
“Brain food,” she said.
“Brains—yum.” Mookie shoved a chocolate bar toward my face. “Mmmmm. Zombie boy likes brains.”
I pushed his hand away. “Knock it off.”
“Okay, I’ll eat your brains.” Mookie chomped down on the bar. Then he started to laugh.
“Okay, what is it?” I asked.
“I got another one. How does a zombie measure stuff?”
“I don’t know.”
“With a twelve-inch drooler.”
“That’s not funny,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
He laughed and ate all the way back to the market. I stayed behind him so I wouldn’t get sprayed with chocolate goop.
After finding everything on her list, Abigail said, “Okay. We just have to mix it up and let you drink it. In a week or so, all the meat will be pretty much liquified. Then you can hang upside down and drain it right out of you.”
“That would be perfect.” I really didn’t like lugging around all the extra weight. I was definitely off balance. I wasn’t used to having a gut hanging down in front of me.
We went to my place, and Abigail mixed up the formula. After I drank it down, she had me drink a couple large glasses of water.
“The more liquid you can add to the mix, the better,” she said. “Try to keep drinking a lot each day.”
I patted my stomach. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get rid of this.” The water made me feel even heavier. But I didn’t care, since I knew it would all be out of me soon enough.
“Just be careful,” Abigail said. “The decomposition might produce a bit of methane. That’s an explosive gas. Keep away from flames and sparks.”
Mookie laughed and poked me in the gut. “Boom!”
“You should talk.” I remembered a disastrous experiment Mookie had tried last year when he’d farted on a candle. He hadn’t been able to sit down for a week. Of course, it was sort of my fault for talking him into trying it.
I wasn’t the only one Abigail shared her good ideas with. In school on Monday, I noticed Denali seemed a lot happier.
“It’s crazy,” she told us when we got to home base. “Someone sent my folks an e-mail with all kinds of ideas for getting more business. My dad told me some of the ideas were great.”
“Where’d the e-mail come from?” Abigail asked.
“They don’t know,” Denali said. “Whoever sent it hid the address. I wonder why someone would do that?”
I glanced at Abigail. She winked at me, then put her fingertip to her lips to warn me not to spill her secret.
“That was nice of you,” I told her after morning announcements.
“I hope it helps. I did some research. Most spills and stains happen at dinner. And most dry cleaners close before then. But people like to deal with messy problems as quickly as possible. So I told them it’s okay if they close early, but they should open again for a couple hours each evening.” She explained some of her other ideas. They all sounded good.
By then, it was time for class. We learned about Nathan Hale in social studies. He was hanged by the British during the Revolutionary War for being an American spy. I hoped this wasn’t a pattern for Nathans.
“Good thing you don’t need to breathe,” Mookie whispered to me as Ms. Otranto finished the lesson.
In gym class, every pair of wrestlers except for Rodney and Omar had joined Ferdinand and me in pretending to wrestle. We did perfect takedowns, perfect escapes, and all sorts of other awesome moves. Kids flashed me grins or winks whenever Mr. Lomux wasn’t watching.
“All right,” he said halfway through class. “You’re not looking bad. Let’s toughen you kids up some more.”
He had each of us grab a pair of dumbbells and hold our arms straight out to the side. Then he set the timer on the basketball scoreboard to fifteen minutes.
“Whoever drops his arms before time runs out gives me twenty laps,” he said.
I heard grunts and groans around me. In a minute or two, there were kids running laps. I watched Mookie run. He flapped his arms and pretended he was a bird. Mr. Lomux yelled at him. Mookie didn’t seem to care.
I had the feeling Mookie would be able to deal with being a zombie a lot better than I could. He seemed to be able to handle everything that happened in his life.
I realized the gym was a lot quieter than it had been. There weren’t any footsteps. Nobody was running. I guess I’d gotten lost in thought. I looked around. Everyone w
as over by the bleachers, catching their breath. They’d all run.
A loud buzz echoed through the gym as the scoreboard timer reached zero. Oh, great. I was still holding the weights, after every other kid had not only dropped out, but also run twenty laps. Mr. Lomux was staring at me. And Rodney was glaring.
I groaned, then let my arms drop, trying to pretend I was tired. I put down the barbells, then started to run my first lap.
“No need, Abercrombie,” Mr. Lomux said. “You went the distance. You earned the right to skip the laps.” He walked over to me, then turned to the class.
“Do you see? This is what I can do for you. Do you remember what this boy was like at the beginning of the year? He was a total mess. He was a weakling. He couldn’t even run a lap without gasping. But look at him now. He’s in shape. And do you know why?”
“I know!” Mookie shouted, thrusting his hand in the air. Then his eyes got wide and his face got pale. “No, I don’t!” He shook his head and yanked his hand down.
Everyone else shook their heads. They didn’t have a clue.
“Because I drove him hard,” Mr. Lomux said. He thumped his chest. “Me. I turned a pathetic loser into a champion athlete. That’s what they pay me to do. And I can do that for all of you.”
As we headed out of class, Ferdinand said, “Wow—I never realized Mr. Lomux was such a good teacher.”
In language arts, Ms. Otranto said, “This morning, in social studies, we learned about Nathan Hale. I want you to think about what he did. Then I want you to make some notes for an essay. The topic will be, What does it mean to make a sacrifice for someone else?”
That was a topic I already knew something about. But my experience wasn’t the sort I wanted to put down in writing. It was something I wanted to feel again. I ended up just using some of the examples from social studies, but my mind kept flashing pictures of me running through the night in my superhero costume.
In art class, things went well.
“Very nice, Nathan.”
“Huh?” I glanced up. Mr. Dorian was standing right next to me, looking down at my drawing.
“You have a good, steady line going there,” he said. “Not everybody can control the pencil that perfectly.”