Alex Sparrow and the Zumbie Apocalypse Read online

  ‘Oh no, they think it was me!’ Jess said.

  ‘It’s because you’re so disrespectful at funerals,’ I sighed. ‘Now let’s get outside and talk zombies.’

  We finally made it out into the freezing air.

  ‘She’s not a zombie, Double-O-Delusional.’ Jess pulled her coat on and did up the zip.

  ‘Just because you hated her so much you shouted something rude at her funeral, does not mean that she isn’t a zombie. I need to think up a new sidekick name for you.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon find out. If she really is a zombie, she’ll bite Paul and the other people that work here, and they’ll all come out and attack us.’

  ‘Son of a biscuit, you’re right for once!’ I said, stuffing my hand into my pocket and feeling around. ‘Luckily for you, I brought a gadget-slash-weapon, which also means we have item three from the list ticked off.’

  ‘Why would you bring a weapon to a funeral?’ Jess said.

  ‘I ordered it from the internet a week ago. I was just about to test it this morning when Mum walked in. I knew she wouldn’t want me having something so dangerous, so I hid it in my pocket. And a good thing I did.’

  ‘Where even are your mum and nan? They’re going to be looking for us – we should find them.’

  ‘No, Jessticles. Mum and Nanny are old and weak. If the zombies are coming – and they are coming – they’ll only slow us down.’

  ‘Nice.’ Jess looked at me like I’d just punched a kitten.

  I was about to show Jess my new and incredibly cool weapon, when Mum and Nanny Sparrow pushed through the crowd towards us.

  ‘Come on, Alex, we’re getting in the car.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go home yet, I need to know what’s going on.’ I side-eyed Jess. ‘It could be a matter of national security.’

  ‘We’re not going home, love. We’re going to the wake.’ Nanny put her arm around me.

  ‘You see, Jess, this happens so often that they even have a name for it.’

  ‘What happens so often, Alex?’ Nanny said.

  ‘You know, when dead bodies wake up.’

  Mum and Nanny laughed. ‘A wake is what you call the gathering after a funeral ceremony,’ Mum said. ‘Where we all get together and remember the person we’ve lost.’

  ‘You thought we were going to watch Mrs Spires climbing out of her coffin, didn’t you?’ Jess sniggered.

  ‘No,’ I said, my stink cutting through the frosty air. ‘Because it makes so much sense to have a party after someone has died. I’m staying here until I know what’s going on.’ I put my agent foot down. ‘Where do you even have these alleged funeral parties, anyway?’

  ‘At the cricket club,’ Mum said. ‘There will be a buffet.’

  ‘What are we waiting for? Off to the car!’ And I ran ahead as fast as I could across the icy ground.

  2

  The Cricket Club of Destiny and The One with No Name

  I managed to get to the buffet, pile my plate high with food, and get a drink before everything got contaminated with people’s unwashed toilet hands. I dibsed us a table in the corner and sat down with my lunch, most of which involved meat in pastry and cubes of things on sticks. Jess had a pathetic-looking plate of carrot coins and celery shards. I looked around at the cricket club. Since the shiny new leisure centre had opened down the road, it didn’t get used for sports much, except for cricket in the summer. But whenever anyone had any kind of party in Cherry Tree Lane, they pretty much always had it here. It was really big, with loads of tables and chairs and a massive snooker table in one corner. It was also the least fancy place in town. Everything in it was brown-coloured, even the manky cat that always hung out there. It was decorated for Christmas now, with multi-coloured lights and tinsel draped across the walls, but somehow it still gave me an overwhelming sense of brown.

  ‘How’s Meena doing now?’ I asked between mouthfuls. Meena was a German Shepherd dog that had belonged to an animal scientist called Taran (who Jess had a massive crush on when she met him, as I like to remind her). He pretended he was awesome, and he wore cool cardigans, but it turned out he was stealing animals and doing awful things to them in his experiments for McMonaghan. After we defeated him at the animal-testing SPARC laboratory, Meena was taken into care. But she’d been so brave, protecting us from Taran and helping us escape, we couldn’t leave her in a foster home. So Jess had adopted her.

  Jess swallowed a chunk of raw carrot. ‘She’s still clingy. She’s happy as long as I’m there but she gets scared whenever I go out without her. How about Mr Prickles?’

  ‘His spines are growing back nicely and his sore bits are all better, but he has nightmares when he sleeps. He makes these squeaking noises that sound like crying. It’s awful.’ My hedgehog, the awesome Mr Prickles, was one of the smallest, and bravest, victims of Taran and his shady boss at SPARC, the evil genius Montgomery McMonaghan.

  ‘Montgomery McMonaghan is responsible for so much suffering,’ said Jess.

  ‘Yeah, it seems like every time something bad goes down in Cherry Tree Lane, he’s behind it. He turned half the school into blueberries – I mean brainwashed the pupils, with his sidekick teacher Miss Smilie – then started on the local animals with SPARC. What is his beef with our town?’

  Jess started to twitch. She only twitched when she was using her own superpower – communicating with animals.

  ‘Honestly, Jessticles, I know you think I eat like a pig, but there’s no need to talk to me like one. Rude.’

  ‘I’m not talking to you,’ Jess said. ‘I’m talking to her.’ She pointed at the manky cricket club cat. ‘She wants us to follow her.’

  I looked at the cat, who was chocolate brown and crazy fluffy. There was also a crazy look in her eyes which made me definitely not want to follow her anywhere.

  ‘You go,’ I said. ‘There’s a trifle the size of a bath over there, and I intend to eat at least half of it.’

  ‘She said she has information about “that which we seek”.’

  I sighed, and prayed to Thor, god of thunder and over-eating, that the trifle would be intact when we returned, and then we followed the cat out of the main room and down some narrow stairs. As the door closed behind us, the sound of the party – clinking glasses and old people chatter – faded to almost nothing. The lights in the stairwell sputtered, and an icy breeze followed us, even though there weren’t any open windows. The cat had, apparently, agreed to spare us a few moments of her time, but only if we helped her prepare.

  ‘Prepare for what, though, Jess?’ I whispered. ‘A less courageous and experienced agent might find this a bit creepy.’

  ‘We can’t have a proper talk with her in front of everyone,’ Jess hissed back. ‘She said she can help us. What choice do we have?’

  Since our dealings with Boris and Noodle, the school guinea pigs of treachery, we’d become more suspicious of animals we didn’t know. Like people, they were complicated. Like people, they could have hidden agendas.

  This cat might once have been fancy, but her fur was tangled and she had a slight limp. We followed her down winding corridors, all cold and empty, the smell of old sweat lingering in the air. I was still half expecting the start of the zombie outbreak, so I kept my hand on the weapon in my pocket. Jess didn’t look scared at all, and that made me feel better.

  The cat pushed through some double doors and we found ourselves in a changing room. The women’s changing room.

  ‘Maybe I should wait outside,’ I said, assessing the room for escape routes and not finding any.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t think anyone’s used this as a changing room for months.’

  I turned to the cat. ‘Thanks for bringing us to this totally non-creepy basement changing room with no fire exits. What’s your name?’

  Jess twitched away as the cat sat in front of a full-length mirror and started preening herself.

  ‘Tell me what she’s saying, Jess. I am the top agent, so I should hear everything
.’

  ‘Why don’t you shut up so I can listen?’

  ‘Unfair.’ I poked her in the arm.

  ‘Stop it!’ Jess whacked me.

  ‘Tell me, then,’ I said. ‘Every word.’

  ‘I’ll tell you every word … ish.’

  ‘That’ll do, my raging friend.’

  ‘OK, here we go…’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What’s her voice like?’

  ‘Think wistful, kind of husky, like she has a bit of a sore throat.’ Jess turned to the cat. ‘Does that sound right?’ She juddered away for a few seconds, then turned back to me. ‘She told me to say that her voice is full of the tears of bittersweet memories and a roughness that reflects the hardships she has endured.’

  Blimey. ‘Got it,’ I said.

  ‘She doesn’t have a name. She had one once, but that was a lifetime ago, during happier days when she was loved.’

  ‘Oh.’ I didn’t say it out loud because I’ve learnt a lot about offending animals, but I was starting to regret demanding the full-length version from Jess.

  ‘She used to be audacious. Special. She wouldn’t get out of bed for anything less than the finest smoked salmon. Now she must live amongst the dregs of society, begging for scraps, performing like a common entertainer.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ I said, wanting to hurry things along a bit.

  Jess juddered away again. ‘She was beloved by her human companion and they resided with a mutual respect and affection, until a cruel twist of fate separated them. Her name was lost with her companion and her pride.’

  ‘And that was how long ago?’

  ‘Two years to a human,’ Jess said. ‘A lifetime to a cat.’

  ‘That’s weird – I’m sure there’s been a cat here for longer than that.’

  The cat made a wheezing noise and shook her head.

  ‘She’s laughing,’ Jess said. ‘She says there has always been and will always be a cat here. This is a hub, a meeting place for lost souls. Some pass through, others stay until they find what they’re looking for. When she moves on – and she will move on when her human companion returns for her – another will take her place.’

  Jeez. This was more depressing than the funeral.

  ‘Um, I hope your human companion finds you soon,’ I said. ‘But why have you brought us here?’

  ‘Hold on,’ Jess said. ‘She wants me to floof her tail.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Floof her tail.’ Jess started combing the cat with no name’s tail with her fingers, gently pulling the hair the wrong way so the tail looked extra fluffy.

  ‘Err, why?’

  ‘Because she’s preparing for her performance. She overheard us talking and has something to show us. All we need to do, is – erm – wait for her performance, and follow.’

  The cat stood and prowled out of the room.

  ‘Not gonna lie, Jess, this is the weirdest situation ever. And we’ve been in some weird situations.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jess shrugged. ‘We’d better follow her.’

  We followed the cat back through the corridors towards the funeral party again. We opened the door to find that the buffet had been demolished, and everyone was a lot louder than they had been. There were empty wine glasses everywhere, and a queue at the bar.

  ‘The cat says we should wait at the jukebox and be ready to load up song number E95,’ Jess said.

  We crossed to the corner of the room where the jukebox stood flashing wildly, like it was desperate to be unleashed. Someone had put a Santa hat on top of its domed head. I examined the song list.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ I said. ‘That song doesn’t really seem appropriate for a funeral.’

  Jess jerked around, then shrugged again. ‘She says she’s been in this business long enough to read a room. When the time comes, load the song and follow.’

  Just then, a man I’d seen at the funeral burst in through the door.

  ‘Can I have your attention, everyone?’ he shouted. He was sweating, his tie lopsided and a huge grin on his face. ‘I have news – miraculous news! She’s not dead. Rose isn’t dead!’

  There was a gasp from the room and a moment of silence while everyone stared at the man.

  ‘There was a freak, one-in-a-million mistake,’ the man said. ‘She was just in some sort of heavily unconscious state. She’s been taken to hospital to be checked over, but she seems completely fine. She’s not dead.’

  Everyone started chattering at the same time, not knowing whether to be shocked, happy or angry.

  ‘Thanks so much to you all for being here,’ the man said. ‘On behalf of Rose and the family, I’d like you all to enjoy the buffet and a drink on us.’

  Everyone cheered.

  ‘Now someone get me a pint,’ the man laughed. ‘Let’s celebrate!’

  The cat nodded at me, so I punched the code into the jukebox.

  Some tropical party music began to play. The cat bounced forward and Jess started to twitch. ‘Grab my waist, we’ve got to get the conga line going and then she’ll lead us to the truth.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  But Jess was already jolting forward, half twitching in conversation with the cat and, I think, half dancing, though it was hard to tell. I put my hands on her waist, which I really didn’t want to do, and shouted, ‘Come on everyone, let’s conga for Mrs Spires!’ Unbelievably, people started to join the line, whooping and singing. We weaved our way around the room, following the cat, until Jess broke away and said, ‘This is where we get off.’

  We stopped in front of a wall of photographs, panting and sweating, as the line of drunken adults carried on past the bar, with some of them laughing at our ‘lack of stamina’.

  ‘So, what are we looking at?’ I said.

  ‘This.’ Jess pointed at a photo. It was of a group of men and boys and girls dressed in cricket clothes, smiling and posing with their bats. Underneath it said “Sinha, Wilkinson, McMonaghan, Patel, Kennedy and Cetinay, celebrating their victory.”

  ‘McMonaghan,’ I said, peering at the photo. ‘It couldn’t be, could it?’.

  ‘Look, there!’ Jess tapped the glass. ‘It looks just like him. Montgomery McMonaghan. He plays cricket in Cherry Tree Lane, or at least he used to. He’s connected to the town.’

  ‘Finally, a clue!’ I said.

  ‘Alex, we weren’t even looking for clues. Don’t you think this is weirdly convenient?’

  ‘No. It’s because I am an awesome agent. Now how are we going to steal this photo? The frame’s quite big and looks heavy, but I could probably smuggle it out under my coat.’

  ‘Or we could do this,’ Jess said, holding up her phone and taking a photograph of the photograph. She looked at me in disgust.

  We walked back over to our table and sat down.

  ‘Weirdest day ever,’ Jess said, taking a sip of her lemonade.

  3

  Return of The Spires

  A few days after the funeral that turned out not to be a funeral, me and Jess sat at the breakfast bar in my kitchen, looking at the photo on her phone.

  ‘It kind of looks like an old photo,’ I said, ‘but Montgomery McMonaghan looks about the same age as he does now.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that too.’

  ‘You know what this means?’ I looked at Jess.

  ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me what you think it means, and I’m sure it’s going to be idiotic.’

  ‘All his experimenting,’ I said. ‘The brainwashing of kids and the testing on animals. He’s found the secret to immortality. He’s actually three hundred years old.’

  Jess rolled her eyes. ‘Like I said. Idiotic.’

  ‘It’s classic super-villain stuff, though. They all want to live for ever; it’s part of the job description.’

  ‘What do you think, Bob?’ Jess said, showing him the picture as he swam a circuit of the fish tank he shared with Elle. Bob, although a goldfish, had been a vital agent in our adventures, and was excellent at n
oticing things that our pathetic human eyes couldn’t.

  ‘It’s sick to have a clue about McMonaghan’s links to Cherry Tree Lane, but I don’t really know what we can do with it,’ I sighed.

  ‘Alex!’ Mum’s voice made me jump as she walked into the kitchen. Jess dropped her phone.

  ‘Mrs Spires came home from the hospital this morning, and her children have had to go back to Cornwall. Can you and Jess just pop in on her and make sure she’s OK?’

  ‘We’re a bit busy, actually, Mum,’ I said. ‘Can’t you go?’

  ‘I have to take Lauren to ballet, and your dad is working late. Be a good boy and just spend half an hour with her, she’s been through a lot.’

  ‘How about Lauren just skips ballet? She dances like a flipping elephant, anyway,’ I said, annoyed that Mum was making me do something useful and still a bit worried that Mrs Spires would try to eat my brain.

  ‘Of course we’ll go, Mrs Sparrow,’ Jess said, giving me the stink-eye. ‘Come on, Alex.’

  I scraped my stool back as angrily as I could. Mum pretended she didn’t notice and kissed me on top of my head.