The photographs of me.
This was insane. I wasn’t even popular at school—I was bullied every single day of my life.
“Best not to dwell on it,” said Max sullenly. “Let’s just get inside.”
The stench in the foyer was absolutely gut-wrenching, but I soon realized that it was coming from my hair and not from the rotting cat corpse I expected to find behind the reception desk. Apparently, undead dandruff smelled a lot like gerbil vomit.
I marched into the main corridor behind my strange new friend and found myself trying to guess where we were headed. I couldn’t. We passed the English Department and proceeded through Geography, Languages, and even beyond the gym.
Where would the undead hang out? I thought. Surely not in the History Department? That would just be rubbing it in!
Imagine my surprise when Max finally opened a door that led into the science lab. I was even more shocked when the lab turned out to be packed full of deadies. It was like a scene from your worst nightmare. There was a little clique of pale, thin kids perched on top of a bench beside the tank containing Mr. Phelps’s pet axolotl. They were all good-looking in a bloodless sort of way, so my immediate guess was vampires. Opposite them was a group of scruffy, hairy skater boys covered in tattoos.
“My other wolf brothers,” Max confirmed, but I wouldn’t have needed to ask. They all smelled terrible. “Don’t take their expressions to heart—they’re always angry.”
In fact, everyone in the room was staring at me, and not in a good way. The werewolves growled and gave me searching glances until Max’s mark was indicated by one near the front, while the vampires looked surprised that I was there at all.
I noticed, with great unease, that there were no other zombies.
“Just ignore everybody here,” Max muttered as every head turned to watch us proceeding down the middle of the room. “Everybody except her.”
Standing at the far end of the lab was a tall, dark-haired girl with lots of freckles and a stern but slightly unfocused expression.
“That’s Jemini,” Max whispered. “Watch out for the mood swings.”
The girl didn’t smile until we were practically on top of her, and even then it looked like a real effort.
“You must be Ed Bagley,” she said. “I’m Jemini Yaddle. Welcome to Mortlake Middle School.”
I’ve been here a million times, I thought. However, out loud I said, “Thanks.”
“Evil Clive will see you in a few minutes,” she said, pointing at a door where the lab assistants hung out. “He’s with someone at the moment.” She turned back to me and tried for another fake smile, but it twisted awkwardly and looked in danger of turning her face inside out. It was fairly obvious she wasn’t the full ticket, but I couldn’t quite see why.
“Before you go in,” she managed, wiping the corner of one watery eye, “I’d like to ask you a big, BIG favor on behalf of the entire company.”
As she spoke, every vampire and werewolf in the room crowded in around me.
“Your arm is something of a problem. It savaged the wraiths, mauled a group of rogue werewolves on the outskirts of town, and I wouldn’t dream of sending my vampires to fight something so destructive. Instead, we’ve decided to band together and lay a trap for it up at the depot. We think we know how to stop it, but we’d like you to act as the bait.”
My face froze as if I’d just been slapped. Hard.
“You want me to—”
“Act as bait, yes. It is your arm, after all…and your responsibility. If my teeth suddenly jumped out of my mouth and went roaming around biting people, then it would be me responsible for sorting it out. That’s only fair. Am I right?”
I smiled weakly and—noting that Max said nothing—gave a reluctant nod.
“Sure,” I said.
After all, it’s only an arm—what’s the worst it could do?
I swallowed, trying to block out the image of screaming wraiths and slaughtered werewolves.
The door to the lab assistant room suddenly creaked open, and a small boy came out sobbing and clutching at his face.
Jemini watched him collapse on the floor in a trembling heap before giving me the first genuine smile I’d seen.
“Evil Clive will see you now,” she said.
LESSON 13: WHEN YOU’RE AMONG KOOKS, ACT LIKE ONE
I felt myself shaking quite violently as I approached the door. There was nothing but shadows all around the opening, and I couldn’t help glancing back at the poor wretch who’d just staggered out of the room.
I reached out and gingerly pushed back the door, stepping inside and coughing a bit to announce my presence. Something jumped in my throat, but since it was likely to be one or more of my tonsils giving up, I decided to ignore it.
There was no reply from the gloomy depths of the room, but to my horror, I could see a skeletal hand resting on top of a desk beyond the solitary alcove in the far corner. There was a chair positioned in front of it.
I closed the door behind me and swallowed.
“Er…hello?”
Nothing. I couldn’t stop Max’s description of Evil Clive from rumbling through my head: You really have to earn his respect…some folks think he’s the devil…twisted beyond words.
Then something inside me snapped. I’m a member of the undead now—I need to start acting like it.
Taking a deep breath, I strode across the room and spun around as I arrived before the alcove, sliding into the chair with as much cool style as I could muster.
“I’m Ed Bagley,” I said…and froze.
Sitting before me was a grinning human skeleton in a ripped baseball cap with “Deaf Donkey” scrawled across the front in neon-yellow ink.
I waited a few long and incredibly awkward seconds, my eyes wide with shock, before staring around the room and firing off a question to anyone who might be hiding in the shadows.
“Um…is this some kind of joke?”
There was no reply, and the amount of conversation coming from the lab outside told me that absolutely no one was playing a practical joke.
I turned back to the skeleton, which hadn’t moved an inch.
“Are you Clive?” I asked, feeling like a complete idiot. “Um…how’s it going? It must be really difficult, running an undead gang like this.”
Silence.
He’s totally dead, I thought. I mean, sure—so am I…but this guy looks like he’s about three hundred years past his use-by date. Are they all CRAZY?
I looked down and noticed a folder open in front of Clive. It had my name on it.
Feeling ever so slightly guilty for not giving Clive respect, I snatched the folder, spun it around, and began to investigate the contents.
There was a single sheet of paper inside, containing a series of bullet-point facts. I read:
I stared at the page until the lines blurred into a single, smudgy mess.
Possessed? Are they talking about my arm? Who in the name of sanity is Kambo Cheapteeth?
There was another paragraph below the report, but I didn’t have time to read it. A knock on the door shook me from my reverie, and I quickly re-positioned the folder in front of Evil Clive.
I turned just as a worried-looking vampire hurried into the room.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But something’s come up, and I really need to talk to the boss. It’s…it’s an emergency.”
I nodded, quickly got up from the chair, and started to walk away, but I simply had to listen to the conversation as I left.
“Clive,” said the vampire. “We’re going to arrange an ambush for the zombie’s arm, and—”
He suddenly stopped as if he’d been interrupted. Then he said, “What? Oh yeah—of course. I think we’ll…Yeah—up at the factory, just before dawn. Do you think that…Of course! Right, I’ll be sure to check it out.”
Yep. Crazy, I thought. They’re all absolutely crazy.
But I’m definitely not an idiot, and I quickly decided that I need
ed to fit in with this ragged band of deadies—after all, they were basically my only friends in this strange and depressing new world I was now condemned to wander.
Thinking on my feet, I began to curl up my lips and make myself cry. Bursting through the door, I staggered into the waiting crowd and collapsed onto my knees.
“He’s EVIL!” I cried. “He’s soooo evil!”
There was a general murmur of agreement from the gang, and suddenly I knew I was in.
When I eventually managed to “pull myself together,” I found that both Jemini and Max were treating me with far greater respect.
“He can be very nasty when you first meet him,” the vampire girl admitted, putting her arm around my shoulders and shaking her head sadly. “He had me in tears several times. I’d never met anyone with such a horrible temper.”
He had you in tears, I thought. Why? Did his skull roll onto your foot or something?
“I know people who’d throw themselves out of buildings rather than talk to Clive,” Max said seriously. “He can just give you that look and you KNOW you’re in deep trouble.”
“You can say that again.” I nodded, wiping a fake tear from my eye. “Look, guys, thanks for trying to make me feel better.” I smiled weakly, now convinced that they were both several cards short of a full deck. “I really appreciate it.”
“It’s time to go,” said a voice. “Everyone is ready.”
I turned around to see that the lab was now packed full of deadies. There were five vampires and six werewolves, all furring up with fangs ablaze and demonic fires glinting in their eyes. There was also a very small, miserable-looking boy in pajamas holding a teddy bear, who seemed completely out of place in the room. However, since no one else made any comment, I thought it best to keep quiet and just ignore him.
Max slapped me hard on the back.
“You up for this, Ed?”
“Er…yeah. I guess so.”
“Great. Let’s go take out your freaky arm!”
LESSON 14: NEVER BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW
We all piled into a convoy of fat monster trucks the vampires had brought along, which was something of a surprise. I still couldn’t really understand how the living couldn’t see and hear us, especially if we were all ripping each other to shreds, screaming, or slamming around in off-road vehicles. However, there was still so much about this place that I didn’t understand…like how the most dangerous undead creature in Mortlake was apparently the thing I used to scratch my leg with when I got an itch. It just didn’t add up.
To make matters worse, Max had climbed into one of the other trucks, leaving me alone with the moody vampire Jemini and the small boy I’d seen in the lab earlier. The werewolf was driving and the rest of us were bouncing around in the back.
“I’m sorry if I seem a bit harsh,” Jemini said. “But you do smell like a six-year-old chicken leg, and besides, I’m still trying to get past my own death. Dying was…very traumatic for me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It probably is for most people, though.”
She looked doubtful and possibly on the verge of tears.
Wow, I thought. Mood Swing City.
“I don’t think I’m quite over it yet,” she went on. “Dying, I mean. Did you know I drowned?”
“No.”
“Well, I did. One day, I will tell you all about my extraordinary death, but now…now isn’t the time.”
“I drowned too,” said a voice. I looked down at the boy. This time, I couldn’t ignore him.
He really was very small, with dark hair and a squint. He couldn’t be more than four or five years old and was surrounded by an eerie, milky-white haze.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Ed. Ed Bagley.”
He looked up at me.
“I’m Forgoth the Cursed,” he said, holding up the exceedingly peculiar-looking teddy bear. “And this is Mumps.”
“Forgoth the Cursed?”
“Yeah, it’s an awesome name, isn’t it?”
“Totally. Um…how did you become cursed?”
Forgoth sniffed. “I was possessed by a devil intent on the destruction of my immortal soul,” he said, as if he was reading a set of cooking instructions. “It was a major bummer.”
I whistled between my teeth.
“So aren’t you frightened of tagging along with us? You know, fighting a demonic hand and all?”
Forgoth shook his head.
“Naaah,” he muttered. “Mumps protects me from most stuff.”
I looked down at the ragged stuffed toy. “You are talking about that teddy bear, right?”
Forgoth grinned. “Oh, Mumps isn’t a teddy bear,” he said. “He’s a Free-Roaming Demonic Entity.”
And that was it. He didn’t say another word.
The trucks all skidded to a halt outside the depot. I’d been there a few times before, when the school was doing a project in it, but to be honest, the place always gave me the creeps.
There was a massive sign over the doors that read: CINFAX DISTRIBUTION WAREHOUSE—MORTLAKE DEPOT. The grounds outside were littered with cardboard boxes and absolutely crammed with trucks: low loaders, moving trucks, even a few eighteen-wheelers. I wondered if the one that hit me was there.
“Okay, everyone,” said Jemini, jumping down from the first truck as the entire gang began to shuffle around her. She put her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a long glass vial containing some green liquid. “Evil Clive has given us this: it’s a mutating fluid that will turn Ed’s evil arm into something a bit more humanoid and therefore much easier to fight.”
There was a sort of half cheer from the gang, which died away when Jemini walked over to me and thrust the vial into my hand.
“Um…?” I managed. “You want me to splash this over my arm?”
“You catch on quick,” she said, putting her head on one side and smiling that sickly-sweet smile. Then she turned back to the gang. “Everyone else HIDE! Now! We attack just as soon as Ed’s completed his part of the assault.”
And that was it: in five seconds, the entire gang had vanished. They were literally nowhere to be seen. I stood alone in the parking area of the distribution depot, surrounded by abandoned trucks and old cardboard boxes. I felt small, pathetic, and hopelessly lost…
…and I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was supposed to do.
So I just stood there.
After a few minutes, I looked down at the vial of green liquid in my hand. It was bubbling.
Then I heard the noise and looked up again.
A truck was coming up the road—a big one. It was moving at a decent speed and heading straight for the factory.
Inside the truck, which veered all over the road in every direction, the human driver was sitting on the front seat, fixated on the disaster unfolding in front of him. My severed hand was clamped firmly on his head, gently tapping a finger on one side of the man’s skull when it wanted him to skid left or right. Every time it tightened its grip, it appeared that the poor driver’s foot would slam down on the accelerator, urging the truck to reach greater and greater speeds as it hurtled up the road.
Never one to be caught twice with the same death, I quickly came to my senses and leaped out of the way, just in time to see the truck plow into the vehicles behind me. I watched in frank astonishment as the giant cab crunched in on itself, dragging its trailer behind it. I caught a glimpse of something that made my stomach turn somersaults: the driver, his leg crushed, fell out of the cab, dragged himself onto his other foot, and staggered toward me, the hand still clamped on his head.
Eyes rolled back and jaw sagging, his mouth began to move as if he was being controlled by a deranged puppet master.
“Ed! I’m coming for you, Ed!”
I could probably have run forward at that point and attacked him. I could have stood my ground and said something like, “Bring it on, slackjaw!” However, I didn’t do any of those things.
Nope. Instead, I did my roadrunner im
pression again.
I didn’t even reach the tree line.
The arm catapulted itself from the head of the poor trucker and flew over the top of me, landing squarely on the tarmac and blocking my path.
It reared up again, just as it had done in the cemetery, and a terrible mouth tore open in the palm of the hand.
“This is the end for you, Ed,” it growled. “I should have finished you off in the sewer.”
I had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I felt my hand tighten on the vial. Suddenly, I was very, very angry.
“Why didn’t you finish me off in the sewer?” I snapped. “I think it’s because you can’t. For some reason, you need me alive…”
The arm cackled evilly. “Shall we test out your theory, Ed? Shall we?”
It darted forward with lightning speed and clamped hold of my face.
The pain was excruciating. I could feel my bones crunching under the pressure of the demonic grip.
“Arggghhh!”
“You like that, Ed? Do you? DO YOU?”
I heard one of my cheekbones crack. I snatched hold of the arm with my own hand and tried to wrench it free.
I managed it, but the lunatic limb then clamped hold of my right leg and ripped a massive lump of flesh from the thigh. It was biting me with savage little teeth.
“Arggghghh!”
I collapsed onto the ground, writhing around as I tried to shake off the demented appendage.
“Help!” I screamed. “Somebody help me!”
However, the hidden deadies were either too scared or too selfish to come to my aid. I was completely on my own.
The arm finished chomping on my flesh and swapped legs. It was about to take an even bigger bite from my left calf when I made the only offensive move I could think of.
I swung around with my remaining arm and smashed the vial over my crazed attacker. The glass exploded and green liquid spurted all over the place. I quickly rolled out of the way, shedding my shirt when some of the vial’s contents splashed onto it.
Undead Ed Page 4