My Zombie Hamster

by Havelock McCreely

  “Emma Hunter. Husband. Three children. Where is your family?”

  We raised our hands, and he ran the device very slowly over our lifechips.

  “Says here you’re all still alive. Well done.”

  “Of course we’re alive, you idiot!” snapped Gran. “You can see that!”

  He turned to Gran. “Can’t always trust the eyes, ma’am. You could be a new breed of particularly cunning zombie. Have to make sure.”

  The Zombie Squad officer ran the scanner over Gran’s wrist and read the display. Then he did it again, just to be on the safe side.

  I should point out that Zombie Squad officers aren’t really known for their sharp wits. They’re more like a volunteer police force. Normal people with a craving for power. I imagine the entry exams go something like this.

  Entry Exam for Being a Zombie Squad Person

  QUESTION 1: Are you a zombie? (Cross out wrong answers.)

  ANSWER: Yes. No. Unsure.

  QUESTION 2: Do you like bossing people around?

  ANSWER: Yes. No. Unsure.

  Congratulations. You’re hired.

  3:00 p.m. Christmas dinner. Dry turkey. Lumpy gravy. Overcooked vegetables. Gran gleefully prodding her food and declaring it inedible.

  Mom not happy.

  SNUFFLES WATCH: Snuffles slept all day, waking up only to stuff his cheeks full of food before returning to his bed.

  Maybe we have some things in common after all.

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26

  Spent the day in bed playing video games. (With the control pad! Can you believe it?) But I didn’t have any peace. Mom kept telling me to get up and do something productive.

  “Like you?” I asked.

  “Yes. Like me.”

  So I asked her if she wanted me to watch celebrity gossip on TV, read about it in a magazine, or talk about it on the phone for an hour to her friend.

  She left me alone after that.

  It’s reached a certain point in my dad’s work cycle. I’ve mentioned before that Dad is a writer. He writes these pulp science fiction books featuring a guy called Atticus Pope. He’s on the fifth book right now, which has something to do with Atticus fighting Nazis on the moon. (You can tell my dad really loves the Indiana Jones and James Bond movies. His books are the same kind of thing. Atticus Pope foiling evil guys bent on stealing something priceless or taking over the world.)

  But when Dad gets really into writing his books, he goes into a world of his own, wandering around the house in his robe, a toy gun in his hand, acting out the scenes before he writes them down. It’s very funny to watch.

  He wandered out into the front yard once when he was really stuck on a book, testing out scenes, then shaking his head and trying out different versions. Mom filmed him on her phone and played it back to show him how ridiculous he looked. But if she thought it was going to embarrass him into stopping, she was very much mistaken. He watched the video silently, jumped up, gave Mom a kiss on the cheek, and said she’d solved the problem for him. Atticus needed a love interest who betrays him.

  Then he disappeared into his office for the rest of the afternoon. Mom wasn’t particularly impressed.

  I’ve read Dad’s books. They’re pretty good. A bit old-fashioned, though. All ray guns and rocket ships. But he did give me permission to write a screenplay based on the stories.

  I tried, but to be honest, it was pretty hard work, so I scrapped that idea and have been writing an original screenplay based on Atticus Pope. I’ll show it to Dad once it’s finished. I’m sure he’ll think it’s amazing. In fact, I reckon he’ll want to adapt my screenplay into his next Atticus Pope book.

  I wonder how much he’ll pay me for that?

  SNUFFLES WATCH: Snuffles escaped from his cage. Don’t ask me how. Have searched everywhere but can’t find him. Haven’t told anyone yet. Contemplated buying a replacement before Mom and Dad notice. Realized I can’t. All the paperwork. Registering the pet, getting an all clear on the lifechip, that kind of thing. Plus, you need a guardian’s signature to own any kind of animal.

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27

  I’m getting worried about Katie. She’s always been a bit odd, but recently she’s been getting a lot worse.

  Mom told me to call her for lunch. I did what I usually do, which is to scream out her name at the top of my lungs. Mom threw a dish towel at my face and told me to go and get her.

  What is it with parents and unnecessary exercise? Or rather, what is it about parents forcing unnecessary exercise on their children? If we’d both shouted, Katie would have heard us, but instead of us putting our heads together to come up with a solution to the problem, Mom orders me to do uncalled-for physical exercise. I get enough of that at school!

  I found Katie staring at herself in the mirror, with tears streaming down her face.

  I asked her what was wrong. Our eyes locked in the mirror. There was a brief pause, and then she said in a low, sepulchral (I looked that word up in the dictionary; it fits perfectly) voice, “Nothing’s wrong. I just like the taste of tears.”

  I grinned and nodded as if I hadn’t heard a thing. “Well, that’s good. Lunch is ready,” I said, then bolted back downstairs.

  Weird.

  SNUFFLES WATCH: Snuffles is back in his cage, sleeping under a pile of sawdust. He must have gotten bored and returned home. That’s a relief. Won’t have to explain to Mom and Dad how I managed to lose him after only a couple of days.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28

  Besides Charlie, I have two other best friends, Calvin and Aren. (We all live on the same street, so I suppose it was natural that we formed a group.) I mentioned them before, but I thought I should describe them a bit more here.

  Calvin is … how should I put it? He’s a bit slow.

  For instance, when he types searches into the Web, even Google doesn’t know what he’s actually trying to spell.

  His brother once convinced him you could buy nonstick glue so there wasn’t any gooey mess on your fingers, and he spent an entire day going from store to store asking if they stocked it.

  Oh, and my personal favorite. He thought his orange juice was trying to send him psychic messages because the carton said “concentrate” on the side. He’d stare at it for half an hour straight, just waiting for a sign. I asked what he thought was going to happen, and he said he was unsure. Either an alien race was going to contact him or his future self had discovered a method of communicating with him in the past and was going to send him messages that would make him rich.

  Aren is the complete opposite. His parents are originally from Nigeria. They moved here before the zombie outbreak. Aren is so clever it’s scary. He watches MythBusters and tells us where the guys on the show went wrong with their testing. Which, to me, is amazing, because all of my science knowledge is taken from MythBusters. After each episode I text him to ask if he thinks they did it right.

  Both guys came around today, and guess what? They both got the Runeswords! No Christmas character-building for them.

  Life is so unfair.

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29

  I hate Sundays. I always have.

  Well, not always. But ever since I started school I’ve hated Sundays. There is a program here that has been on forever. One of those current-affairs-filled-with-bad-news programs. Every Sunday evening at seven o’clock, its horrible, fateful music starts playing, and that’s when you know your weekend is officially over. That homework can’t be put off for another second.

  And you can’t even ignore it at the beginning of the weekend. The makers of the show start pushing out their promos on Friday night. So even before you’ve had a chance to collapse on the couch and contemplate the glorious weekend stretching ahead of you, a commercial appears with that horrible, depressing music to warn you that Sunday is only a matter of hours away.

  It’s like those stores that have back-to-school promotions three weeks into summer vacation. It shouldn’t be allowed.

  When I become Grand High
Overseer of the World I’ll make sure that kind of thing is banned for good. (I contemplated becoming President, but then thought, why limit myself? Grand High Overseer of the World sounds so much better.)

  I’ve started putting a list together of all the things I’ll change.

  List of Annoying Things I Will Change When I Am Declared Grand High Overseer of the World

  1. No running ads for Sunday-night shows on Friday. No exceptions.

  2. No advertising back-to-school specials three weeks into summer vacation.

  (I’m going to have to invent a special punishment for those stores that use the slogan “Back2School” in any advertisement. It’s one of those things that really annoys me.)

  3. Every house is to be fitted with intercoms in each room. (That way I won’t have to climb the stairs to get Katie. Not that I would have to if I was Grand High Overseer of the World. I’d just hire a flunky to do that for me.)

  4. During school holidays, parents must go to bed by eight thirty at night (nine if they’ve been good), and all children under sixteen get to stay up as long as they like. Also, it will be against the law for parents to wake kids up before noon.

  I’m sure there will be more to add.

  SNUFFLES WATCH: Snuffles still sleeping off his out-of-cage adventure. He hasn’t moved much at all since he came back.

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 30

  9:00 a.m. Snuffles is dead!

  I knew something was wrong when I opened the cage to feed him and he didn’t try to gnaw my finger off. He was lying still beneath all the sawdust, and when I moved him I saw there was a huge lump on his stomach. That must have been what killed him.

  He was stiff, but he couldn’t have been dead long, because the Zombie Police hadn’t arrived to collect him, and they usually come within the hour.

  I felt really horrible about the poor thing. I’d only had him a few days, but still. I should have been nicer to him. I mean, the poor guy died all alone, just a few feet away from me.

  I’ll admit this here, although I’m not sure I should. I cried a bit. And it wasn’t because I was scared of getting into trouble. I cried because I felt really bad for him.

  10:00 a.m. Still no sign of the Zombie Police. Has there been a spate of hamster deaths that they’re busy attending to? Some kind of hamster plague? I checked the news channels, but there was no mention of anything strange going on.

  11:00 a.m. Getting worried. They should have been here by now. Snuffles’s lifechip must have transmitted his death signal ages ago.

  12:00 noon They still haven’t come. Definitely something odd going on. Went to ask Dad where Snuffles’s paperwork was. Said I wanted to keep it safe. He said it was in the kitchen drawer. I winced. Our kitchen drawers are like bottomless pits, filled with dangerous implements no one knows the use for, string that has wrapped around everything in the drawer, Scotch tape that is sticking to everything else, and various other things that no one wants to throw away because they’re convinced they might need them at some point in the future. (They never will.)

  When I finally found the certificates I noticed from the address that the pet shop Dad bought Snuffles from was in a very seedy part of town.

  I phoned the pet shop, and a recording kicked in after a few rings: “This shop has been closed down by order of the Zombie Police due to failure to comply with proper pet-handling legislation. Any customers who bought anything from this location are ordered to report to their local detainment facility immediately. Seriously. Like, right now.”

  There was a brief pause, then the voice continued.

  “Um … I know that sounded a bit heavy and intense, and you’re probably thinking ‘No way I’m reporting anywhere,’ but I promise, nothing will happen to you. Seriously, I promise, and I don’t even have my fingers crossed. So just head on over to the detainment facility and we’ll say no more about it.”

  I slammed the phone down and decided to confront Dad.

  A look of panic flashed across his face, and he pushed me out into the backyard.

  “Not so loud! Your mom will hear!”

  I asked him why that was a problem.

  “Because she told me to get the hamster from the mall. You know, the big one in the center of town.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I didn’t have time! It was Christmas Eve!”

  “So … what were you doing?” I asked. “You were gone all day.”

  Dad lowered his head and mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “I said there was a back-to-back retrospective of the original Star Wars movies showing downtown! How could I pass up a chance to see them on the big screen again?”

  Ah. Star Wars. That explained everything. My dad is a bit obsessed with those movies. To be fair, they are really good movies, and he’d passed on this love to me and Katie. (We didn’t have much choice, really. He used to watch all of them at least once a week. We grew up with them.)

  Although I have to say we don’t hold the same hatred he does for “the other three movies.”

  “Just the originals?” I asked. “Not the prequels?”

  Dad’s face turned cold. “Wash your mouth out with soap, son. Haven’t I raised you better than that?”

  Yeah. Star Wars. Completely obsessed with them. But only the originals. Mention anything after Return of the Jedi and he gets a bit crazy. I tried to get him to watch Clone Wars one day, and he gave me this sad, disappointed look and left the room.

  “Sorry,” I said. “So … Snuffles?”

  “There was a pet shop just outside the movie theater. I got him there.” He frowned at me. “Why all the interest?”

  “Um … no reason. Bye.”

  I sprinted back to my room. That explained everything. The Zombie Police hadn’t come because the hamster probably didn’t even have a lifechip inserted.

  I sat down on my bed and pondered the situation. No lifechip meant no Zombie Police. That was something. But how to explain that to Mom? If I told her Snuffles was dead, she’d figure out what Dad had done, and he’d be in big trouble. Plus, they’d both think I couldn’t look after a hamster.

  Maybe I could just take care of it myself? Bury Snuffles in the backyard and tell everyone he escaped? Hmm. That had possibilities. I’d get into a bit of trouble for letting him escape, but it wouldn’t be too bad.

  I heard a strange scuffling sound and looked up.

  Snuffles was standing in his cage doorway. Staring at me.

  I’d been wrong! He’d just been sleeping after all.

  But then I saw that the huge growth on his stomach had burst or something, revealing his tiny rib cage.

  I froze for a second while the truth hit me. I didn’t want to accept it at first, but as I stared at the poor creature in front of me there was no denying it.

  Snuffles had become a zombie!

  A zombie hamster.

  I had no idea what to do. Nothing in my life had in any way prepared me for a zombie hamster giving me the evil eye.

  He was watching me intensely. His eyes were no longer shiny and black. They were now dull and grayish. His mouth was opening and closing, almost as if he was eating something.

  What to do?

  Destroy it, said a voice in my head. You have to take it out.

  Yes. Destroy it. Good idea. Stop the infection from spreading. I looked around my room for a suitable weapon. The only thing within reach was The Lord of the Rings, the big hardcover version with the cool Alan Lee paintings. I hesitated. Did I really want zombie hamster splattered all over Tolkien?

  But there was no other option. I reached slowly across to my bedside table. Snuffles’s head moved jerkily, following my movements. I picked the book up, hefting its weight. It should do the job.

  I slowly stood up and approached the cage. Then I encountered a second problem.

  How was I supposed to do it? Snuffles was standing on the lip of the cage entrance. If I just whacked the cage, I might not even hit Snuffles. I needed to get h
im out onto the table.

  I tried nudging the cage with my foot, but it just slid across the table. Snuffles didn’t budge from his position. Just rode the cage like he was standing on a boat.

  I tried again, and at that instant my door swung open and Mom came in with my laundry.

  I panicked and accidentally kicked the cage off the table. It tumbled onto the floor, sending Snuffles sailing through the air like an undead superhero hamster. He landed in the hallway, did a somersault on the carpet, then scurried away toward the stairs.

  I’ll say one thing for zombie hamsters. They don’t move as slowly as their human counterparts.

  “Matt!” shouted Mom. “What are you doing?”

  “Snuffles!” I gasped, shoving past her.

  Snuffles had curled up and was rolling down the stairs like a bouncing ball. I raced after him.

  He bolted along the hall. Dad was carrying a huge pile of firewood inside, so the front door was wide open. I tried to get ahead of Snuffles to slam it shut, but I tripped on one of the stupid throw rugs Mom insists on leaving everywhere and landed on my stomach.

  I pushed myself to my knees just in time to see Snuffles dart through the door and out into the front yard.

  Was it my imagination, or did I hear a little undead squeak of triumph as he did so?

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31

  8:00 a.m. Right. Two things on the agenda today. First off, search for Anti-Snuffles (as I dubbed the new, evil version of my pet). And second, avoid the preparations for our New Year’s Eve party. It’s become something of a tradition over the years. A tradition to try to throw a good party, and a tradition to fail. Miserably.

  My parents like to think it’s everyone else’s fault, but there comes a time (like, after the sixth year running) that you have to shoulder the burden of blame yourself.