The Chocopocalypse

by Chris Callaghan

  Inside, she slid the box on a shelf next to some empty paint cans and a deflated basketball and placed a large jar of old curtain rings in front of it to hide it completely. With her experiment in position, filming was stopped by the beep of a button. She shut the shed up, but before she went back indoors she stood for a moment, looking at Dad’s lovingly watered weeds.

  She couldn’t bear the feeling of him being disappointed when he found out they weren’t “proper” flowers. Pulling the last cocoa bean out of her pocket, she poked it into the ground and whispered, “Here’s a chocolaty thing for luck, Dad—hope it helps your weeds grow.”

  Feeling relieved that she had at least started her experiment, Jelly now began worrying about the end of it.

  Would Gran’s chocolate still be there on Sunday?

  —

  Jelly was wallowing in her worries on her journey to school when she almost walked into a small group of people blocking the pavement outside Chox. Were they actually lining up to get in? She could hardly believe that anyone wanted to buy Gari’s expensive and horrible chocolate.

  More banners and signs filled the window now:

  “Last of Chocolate Stock,” Jelly read.

  And: “Once It’s Gone—It’s Gone!”

  And: “We Buy Your Chocolate—For CASH!”

  Then she realized Gari was standing on a little box at the doorway of the shop, talking. That was why he had a crowd. What was he saying? Jelly stopped and listened, curious.

  “I look around this town, and do you know what I see?” the shop owner cried.

  There was a pause.

  “People trying to buy Blocka Chocas?” said someone.

  “I see people seeking the truth about chocolate,” Gari said, ignoring this. “Real chocolate! Not Blocka Chocas, or Wacko Chocs, or Whopper bars—”

  People began muttering and shuffling away.

  “And as a true descendant of the Ancient Easter Egg Islanders, the Chocolati tribe—” Gari went on.

  Now, this caught everyone’s attention, even Jelly’s. There was a quiet “ooooh” sound, and everyone turned back.

  “The world of chocolate will come to an end,” he shrieked in a high-pitched warble, flicking his hair. “It will be tragic. It will be terrible. And it will happen. But…there is hope.”

  More ooohs rippled around the crowd.

  “A dreamland of chocolate awaits. It awaits those who believe. Those who really believe. Those who are prepared to show that they believe. And those wonderful people…will be taken.”

  “But how will we be taken?” asked someone after another pause.

  Gari placed his hands on his heart and lowered his voice. “You will be taken by a majestic serenity.”

  “That’s a type of camper van, isn’t it?” came another voice.

  “No, no!” said Gari, looking cross, trying to drown out a sudden sea of voices:

  “But you’re not going to fit many people in a camper van!”

  “Yeah, you’d need a minibus at least.”

  “He’s right—you’re going to need a real bus, with toilets and stuff.”

  “One with a television!”

  “Look, look, you don’t understand.” Gari smiled, but Jelly thought it looked painful. “If you believe, you will be welcomed. The whole of humanity will be welcomed!”

  A man next to Jelly shook his head. “That’s a lot of buses.”

  “Control your own destiny, my friends,” shouted Gari. “My chocolate temple, Chox, will provide you with opportunities. Buy my pure Chox chocolate and you will be permitted to enter the chocolate dreamland of my ancestors. And for a very reasonable price!”

  Jelly couldn’t believe that people were falling for this nonsense. She was just about to leave when she looked down and saw a little white insect crawl from the doorway of the shop and right onto her school shoe.

  “Eww!” she said, trying to flick it away.

  Everyone turned and looked at her, including Gari, whose dark eyes narrowed as he recognized Jelly.

  “There are those,” he spat, pointing at her, “who don’t understand what purity means—”

  “I wouldn’t buy anything from this shop,” interrupted Jelly bravely. “The chocolate’s horrible, and there are these insects flying around inside too!”

  With cries of horror, the crowd melted away, and Gari’s mustache started twitching furiously.

  That’ll teach you for being so rude, thought Jelly, and she continued on to school.

  At the end of the road she glanced back to see that Gari was left with no customers at all. But a few had gathered around Sir Walter Waffle’s statue instead and were taking turns to lick the lucky chocolate block.

  “Gross!” muttered Jelly.

  —

  Bogie the homeless man and his scruffy dog were sitting on a big square of cardboard outside the school gates. It was their usual spot. Some children laughed at him as they went into school, which Jelly didn’t like. She felt she should apologize for their behavior.

  “Any spare change, Twinkle?” Bogie asked, as he always did.

  Jelly rummaged in a pocket, wondering if she had anything at all. Finding the coins Mum had given her to buy an apple from the school’s Five-a-Day stall (which she never did), she dropped them into his paper cup. She always tried to find something for Bogie, and hoped he’d use some of the money to buy treats for his poor dog, who never seemed to wag his tail.

  In the schoolyard, everyone was eating chocolate. Everyone. Even Mr. Canny the caretaker had a bar of chocolate sticking out of his mouth while he swept up the mass of empty wrappers littering the ground.

  “It’s, like, really crazy, isn’t it, Jell,” said Maya, who appeared with a bar of Wacko Choc in her hand. “I mean, no more chocolate. It’s, like, the end of the world or something.”

  “Yeah, really crazy,” replied Jelly, looking around.

  Kids were showing one another the contents of their pockets and lunch boxes—all of it chocolate. Some were swapping bars for other bars. Potsy Potter had his knapsack open at his feet, full to the brim with chocolate, which he was selling to other kids.

  “I’ve got sixty-seven hits on my science experiment video already,” said Summer Harris-Tweedy as she swaggered past with her group of giggling goons, “and I only posted it last night.”

  It pained Jelly that she had been one of Summer’s hits. It was, in fairness, a brilliant film, but everyone knew her mum and dad had done it for her, like they always did. It had been filmed in a proper laboratory with people dressed as scientists rushing around carrying out kooky experiments, with bubbling beakers of colored liquids releasing clouds of gas and bolts of electricity whizzing between metal spheres on spikes. It had music and special effects and everything!

  “Yeah,” said Maya, “but you probably watched it yourself that many times.”

  Summer smiled angelically. “It has fifty-six ‘likes,’ and everyone knows that you can only ‘like’ something once. How many have you got, Smelly?” she asked, pretending to waft away some bad smell. Jelly knew her experiment wouldn’t finish until Sunday, when either the Chocopocalypse happened or didn’t! The last-minute nature of her project was just another worry on a very long list of worries.

  “I haven’t posted mine yet,” said Jelly, trying to sound like she wasn’t bothered, but Summer had already waltzed off to annoy someone else.

  “I’ve got four views and three ‘likes,’ ” said Maya. “Two of the views are mine and one is my mum’s.” Even though she was far off Summer’s total, she seemed quite pleased.

  Jelly smiled. “The other one is mine. I think it’s great. I’ll watch it again tonight and get you some more views.”

  Maya’s experiment was of her measuring a sunflower each day to see how much it grew. In a week it had somehow managed to shrink two inches!

  Jelly thought back to her own experiment of the chocolate in the tin, and she worried some more. It wasn’t exactly exciting—a tin just sitting t
here in a shed. It would be too embarrassing for words if she got no “likes.” She might as well tell the whole world she had no friends!

  All the talk of chocolate at school soon sent Jelly’s taste buds into overdrive. Everyone was either talking about chocolate or eating chocolate. Even the teachers! Even Mrs. Spinster, the head teacher!

  There was nearly a riot at lunchtime too. The school menu stated that the pudding of the day was “chocolate brownie in a chocolate sauce,” but they were served apple crumble and custard instead. The rumor was that the dinner ladies had stolen all the chocolate brownies for themselves.

  But there was no need to panic, Jelly told herself as she thought about whether she would ever have another Blocka Choca bar. Other people might be panicking, but she definitely wasn’t.

  No, definitely not…It was all just madness. Wasn’t it?

  “Do you want to take a little trip to the Fun-Sized Outlet Park?” Jelly asked Gran after school.

  The Big Choc Lot’s Fun-Sized Outlet Park was a bunch of shops that sold discount chocolate straight from the huge warehouse. “Planning on spending the last of my pension money on chocolate, are you?” teased Gran.

  Jelly nodded and gave her the biggest grin she could.

  Gran grabbed her handbag. “I can’t argue with that!” she said.

  They whispered a quick “bye” to Dad, who was doing the ironing upstairs (whispering to avoid waking Mum), and hurried out the door, giggling excitedly.

  At the gate a white van screeched to a halt in front of them, and out jumped Dodgy Dave, his cell phone pressed against an ear. He wore a paint-spattered polo shirt, and a handful of gold chains jangled around his neck.

  “Your dad in, Jell?” he asked, without taking his phone from his ear.

  Jelly shrugged, closing the door quickly behind her. Gran gave her a funny look but didn’t say anything.

  “Where is he, then?” asked Dave.

  Another vague shrug.

  “Yep, yep, yep…,” said Dave, and it took a moment for Jelly to realize he was talking into his phone. “…No worries, it’s all being dealt with….Yep, yep, the choc is all stocked and locked….”

  “Don’t suppose you could give us a ride to the Big Choc Lot, Dave?” asked Gran, giving Jelly a wink. She always knew how to get rid of Dave. “My knee is playing up something rotten!”

  Dave slipped his phone into his pocket. “Only if you tell your dad I was after him, okay? I’ve got a special job coming up.”

  Jelly nodded and sort of shook her head at the same time—so she wasn’t really lying—but she knew she would probably “forget.”

  “One of you will have to get in the back, though,” said Dave.

  Gran insisted that Jelly sit in the front and disappeared into the back of the van before Jelly could do anything about it.

  “What’s the zip code for the Choc Lot?” asked Dave, his finger poised over the GPS.

  “I can show you where it is,” said Jelly. It wasn’t far at all and was in the center of town.

  “I know where it is, dur-brain,” said Dave, checking his phone and then punching the zip code into the GPS. “I just always use a zip code, even if I know where I’m going.”

  Jelly was afraid to ask, but asked anyway. “Why?”

  “Because it gives me a time to beat.”

  “Estimated duration of travel,” said the neutral voice of the GPS, “is seven minutes and thirty seconds.”

  “I’ll do it in three!” Dave hollered, and hit the accelerator hard. “We have liftoff!”

  Jelly frantically tried to click her seat belt in, and Gran banged her head on the roof before managing to wedge herself between the two front seats. They both took a deep breath and braced themselves as Dave shot down Waffle Way West, yanking the steering wheel around like it was an Xbox controller.

  “That was a crosswalk!” shouted Gran as Dave swerved around some alarmed pedestrians.

  “Nah, I don’t do those,” said Dave. “People in the middle of the road? That’s just dangerous!” He took his hands off the steering wheel and rummaged around in his pockets. “Here, take the wheel, will you, Jell?” he said.

  Jelly stared at Dave, but he didn’t look like he was joking. She grabbed the steering wheel, not really sure what to do with it, but holding it as tightly as possible.

  “There’s a traffic circle coming!” she cried frantically.

  “Well, give it a little turn, then, Einstein!” muttered Dave, trying to unwrap a piece of bubble gum. “It ain’t rocket science.”

  Jelly jerked the wheel in one direction. The wrong direction! Cars screeched out of their way as they hurtled the wrong direction around the traffic circle, completely confusing everyone, including the neutral-voiced GPS. In panic, Jelly squeezed her eyes tight shut, her pounding heart only calming slightly when she felt Dave taking hold of the wheel again.

  “I like your style, kiddo!” He winked. “That saved us a few seconds.” He blew a big pink bubble of gum.

  “I wish I’d walked,” groaned Gran.

  “I wish I’d stayed at home,” whispered Jelly.

  The look on Dave’s face said he wished he could go even faster.

  And he did!

  After a couple more minutes of white-knuckle driving, the brakes squealed, the van lurched to a halt and Gran somersaulted over the handbrake and into Jelly’s lap with an “Ouuff!”

  “Two minutes and fifty seconds. In your face, technology!” said Dave, punching the air. “You’ll have to get out here,” he said. “I can’t get any closer.”

  Jelly gazed up at the huge dome of the Big Choc Lot—protected by large iron gates and a security guard—and the Fun-Sized Outlet Park next to it. Long lines of cars were trying to get in. It looked even busier than that day when Creamy Claire’s Confectionery House had been selling chocolate splatter cakes at “better than half price.”

  Jelly and Gran rolled out of the van, followed by a few chocolate mini eggs that must have been rolling around under the seat. Reluctantly Jelly returned the mini eggs back into the van and wondered how Dave could have spare chocolate just rattling around.

  “I think I’ve broken my bum,” Gran groaned.

  Dave shouted from a half-wound-down window, “Tell your dad to call me, okay?”

  Jelly gave him a halfhearted thumbs-up before the van disappeared in a blast of gray exhaust.

  Gran put her hand on Jelly’s shoulder and smiled. “You know,” she said, “I’m not sure who looks after who in this family. Come on—let’s get in there and buy some chocolate!”

  —

  “Chompton’s gone mad,” Jelly said to herself two hours later. She’d stretched out on her bed to recover from the trip to the Fun-Sized Outlet Park, but her mind was racing. She wasn’t even in the mood to try for the next level in Zombie Puppy Dash.

  She and Gran had returned with only five Chocolate Walnut Mini Munches. It was a pathetic result for such an ordeal.

  Jelly had always hated how rude some people could be when out shopping, but she’d never seen anyone fighting over chocolate before. There was hardly any chocolate left at any of the shops in the Fun-Sized Outlet Park—which was weird, as the Big Choc Lot was right next door—and someone had tried to snatch Jelly’s Chocolate Walnut Mini Munches out of her hand. She had held on tightly to them, even though she didn’t like nutty chocolate that much.

  Was chocolate really going to become extinct? Was that even possible?

  The whole town depended on chocolate. What would happen to everyone who lived in Chompton if chocolate disappeared? All those people who worked in the chocolate shops would be out of work. Then they would move away to find other jobs. There would be even less chance of her dad getting another job, and if everyone moved away, no one would shop at Mum’s supermarket, and that would close down. Then Mum wouldn’t have a job either. It was all becoming horribly real, and it made Jelly feel sick inside.

  All the what-ifs and the maybes were giving her a headache. S
ometimes she thought about things so hard, she forgot to breathe or blink.

  Maybe, she thought, there was something that could replace the important ingredients of chocolate. She took a big breath and rubbed her dry eyes. Then she typed “fake chocolate” into her tablet. Up came list upon list of chocolate recipes, facts, and even songs about fake chocolate. Jelly flicked through before making the mistake of clicking on a page of images of real Chompton chocolate. Her mouth fell open, and without realizing what she was doing, she licked the screen. Immediately she felt silly and wiped away the smudge, accidentally clicking on an ad for Chox.

  The website was very similar to the shop, with elegant photos of dark, immaculate chocolate in unwelcoming surroundings. The pictures, like the ones Gari had on his walls in the shop, seemed too perfect to be real. In one, Gari was shaking hands with a man holding a sack brimming with cocoa beans. In another, he was casually leaning against a huge curved rock, surrounded by lush greenery and looking very smug. The writing was all about the “purity” of chocolate, and there were even percentages and graphs.

  There was no mention of how good it was to eat, how it made your stomach all creamy and warm.

  He’s missing the whole point of chocolate! Jelly thought.

  Something about the photos niggled her, but then she saw that the website’s video had exactly zero “likes,” which cheered her up and made her forget her niggle altogether.

  Mum was applying the finishing touches to her makeup in the living room mirror, ready for another night shift. “Can you put the light on in here, please?” she shouted to Dad in the kitchen.

  Ever since Dad had been learning about electronics, he’d practiced in their own house, leading to many confusing—and probably dangerous—results. The living room light had to be turned on from the kitchen switch, and the kitchen light from the living room’s. The hallway switch operated every light in the house—with the exception of the hallway!