Memoirs of a Neurotic Zombie (3 page)

That night, at three in the morning, I woke in the darkness of the basement to the sound of buzzing. It was Adamini, the zombee who’d killed me. But I don’t hold a grudge and this pigeon-sized bee had actually become something between a friend and a pet. After all, it wasn’t his fault he was the product of an evil science experiment.

He buzzed over my head and nudged me out of my lumpy cot bed. Turns out that genetically modified, death-defying bees are very reliable alarm clocks.

Adamini jumped on my shoulder and I lumbered upstairs to meet up with Nesto and Corina in the backyard. It had become our nightly ritual – a space to be friends, a place to be unnatural. Since my death and unexpected (though not unwelcome) return, I’d come to cherish these night-time hang-outs with the only
two ‘people’ who knew what it felt like to be completely different from their families.

Nesto jumped over the back fence in full chupa mode. His body was lizard-like and slimy. He blinked his big black eyes at me and asked, ‘Have you heard the news?’

Now, ever since I’d discovered Croxton’s collection of supernatural beings and uncovered an evil plot at the university to turn the townsfolk into zombies, I have to admit that the local ‘news’, which only seemed to focus on house fires and traffic accidents, held little appeal. But I suspected Nesto was talking about the Great Summer Camp Evacuation.

‘I just got back and they’re kicking me out,’ I said.

‘It’ll be great,’ hissed Ernesto. ‘I can’t wait to let loose in the wild.’

Adamini buzzed into the air and swarmed around Nesto, who jumped around the backyard after the playful zombee.

I glanced up at Corina’s house, two doors down, and spotted her floating down to join us.

‘I can’t believe I’m being cleared out of Croxton,’ she complained as she made a perfect landing.

‘We all are,’ I said.

‘Even
my
room’s been rented,’ Nesto said, ‘and you can’t even see the floor for all my underwear.’

‘Our parents have been bought,’ I said with a sigh. ‘And they can’t wait to get rid of us. Doctor Mom says the bus picks us up first thing in the morning.’

‘Mother thinks I’m not mature enough to join the convention,’ moaned Corina.

‘You actually
want
to be a dentist?’ asked Nesto.

Corina recoiled. ‘The human mouth disgusts me.’

I loved that we had that in common
.

‘Nesto,’ I explained, ‘the dentists are just a front for Corina’s kind.’

‘Vegans?’ he asked.

‘Vampires,’ she clarified. ‘The convention is a gathering of vampires from every country around the world, held every four years—’

‘Like the Olympics,’ chirped Ernesto, excitedly.

‘Just like,’ snapped Corina. ‘If the Olympics included events like human sacrifice, flying races, competitive coffin building, skull tossing—’

‘Not catching?’ asked Ernesto. ‘That’d be way funner to watch.’

‘
Funner
is not a real word,’ I clarified.

‘I don’t want to go to their stupid convention anyway,’ sulked Corina, but I’m pretty sure she was lying.

‘Human sacrifice, really?’ I asked.

‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted. ‘My dad used to tell me about the conventions as coffin-time stories, but I never really knew what to believe. They probably talk big but just stay up late watching the Twilight movies.’
*

Ernesto put a claw on her leather-clad shoulder and said, ‘Camp will be great, and we’ll all be together. What’s funner than that?’

Corina sneered at the chupa claw. ‘Do
you
want to be a candidate for human sacrifice?’

‘Good thing I’m not human,’ he said.

‘I’m sure exceptions can be made,’ she said.

I motioned to Nesto to remove the claw from her Prada jacket. He slipped his claw off the leather and Corina smiled. ‘You’re right, Ernesto. At least we’ll be together.’

Morning arrived with the scent of slightly burned pancakes, tempting me upstairs to the land of the living. Adamini was already up, buzzing around the basement and eager to get out and stretch his wings.

I rolled off Lumpy Cot and carefully made my bed, complete with hospital corners (not that I’d ever willingly spend any time in a hospital – they are just full of sick people). Adamini buzzed straight at me, tugging at my NinjaMan PJs. I was pretty sure the bee needed to pee.

I opened the back door on the landing and reminded him to keep a low profile while he did his beesness. He nodded and buzzed off.

I think he understood.

Upstairs, Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, smiling at one another. Amanda gorged on a
triple stack of pancakes topped with red liquorice bits.

‘Good morning, camper!’ boomed Dad. ‘Way to be up and Adam!’

He actually slapped his knee, laughing to himself. The proper phrase is ‘up and at ’em’. I think he actually named me Adam just so he’d have a recurring joke.

‘Up and Adam.’ He giggled to himself again.

‘You’re all packed and ready to go,’ said Mom. It seemed she couldn’t wait to get rid of us. She pointed to my clothes neatly folded on my chair.

‘I took the liberty,’ she said.

‘You sure did,’ I replied, noticing that my T-shirt was folded vertically, not in my preferred horizontal format.
*

I grabbed my Mom-approved-outfit (NinjaMan retro tee, boxer briefs, cargo shorts) and rushed upstairs to get showered and changed. After a thorough cleansing, I moisturised and applied the make-up I needed to hide my grey zombie skin.

When I returned downstairs, I spotted two large duffel bags dominating the still newly carpeted front hall. One was marked ‘Adam’ and the other ‘Amanda’.
They looked worryingly like canvas coffins. I unzipped my bag to make sure all of the essentials were packed (they were), and stuffed in my trusty PJs.

‘What’s with the pancakes?’ I asked, returning to the kitchen.

‘Not the pancakes,’ said Mom, pouring brownish golden liquid over her stack. ‘The real question is what’s with the
syrup
?’

‘Real maple syrup,’ said Dad with a smile.

‘I’ll pass on the tree secretion,’ I said.

Amanda shook her head at me. ‘Trees don’t have secrets, stupid.’

‘
Canadian
maple syrup,’ Dad added. ‘And why are we not buying American, you might want to know?’

‘Just load it on,’ ordered Amanda. ‘Don’t care where it comes from.’

Mom leaned in. ‘Adam, Amanda, your camp is in Canada. Isn’t that exciting?’

‘So eat up,
eh
!’ said Dad with a smile.

‘That’s a foreign country,’ I said.

‘You can’t send us there,’ Amanda protested. ‘I doubt they even have the Internet in their igloos. And I cannot be out of touch.’

‘We’ve got good news for you dear on both fronts,’
said Dad. ‘You’ll be in tents, not igloos, and a bunch of us parents got together and loads of the kids from Croxton are going to Camp Nowannakidda as well.’

‘So you can keep all your cliques intact,’ said Mom.

‘You’ll love it there, kids.’ Dad beamed. ‘The camp owner, a really nice old lady, came to town and she gave a big presentation. It looks like so much fun. Oh, to be a kid again.’

‘She showed a slide show of the campers swimming, playing sports, singing around campfires, and doing talent shows,’ Mom explained.

‘And eating doughnuts,’ added my dad. ‘She brought some – they’re amazing!’

He closed his eyes and licked his lips. ‘I can still taste them.’

‘Your father ate
three
,’ my Mom said, ‘because he’s clearly not worried  about his resting metabolic rate.’

‘Speaking of eating,’ I said. ‘I think they have bears up there. Polar, grizzly – you know, the kind that eats kids.’

‘I’m sure it’s very safe, Adam,’ Doctor Mom said. ‘Besides, we’ve paid the  money, signed all the release forms …’

‘Release from what?’

Mom and Dad looked at one another.

‘It’s fine print stuff, champ. Grown-up stuff. Blah-blah,
not our fault if you get eaten by a bear, that kind of thing.’

‘Not funny Dad,’ I said. ‘There’s a reason we live in cities and houses and not in the wild. The wild is wildly unpredictable!’

‘Come on you two,’ urged my mom. ‘The bus leaves soon, so eat up!’

Amanda faked a bear impression as she devoured her pancakes.

‘And our new tenants arrive this afternoon.’ Dad smiled, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the small fortune the vampire dentists would pay to take over our home. ‘Your mother and I are doing a road trip, just the two of us.’

‘Just like our honeymoon,’ Mom said.

I couldn’t believe how eager they were to get rid of us.

Mom and Dad walked to the bottom of the street and we joined a gaggle of parents and kids saying their goodbyes. I spotted Nesto and Corina. Jake was there too and at least a quarter of my soon-to-be eighth-grade class.
†
It seemed the Croxton parents were really cashing in on the vampire influx.

I waved to Nesto, who was surrounded by his siblings and enveloped in a smothering hug from both his mom and his grandma. He wriggled out leaving his elders to continue their embrace. Nesto’s mom was weeping and I wasn’t sure if it was from joy or despair.

Then I found Corina in the crowd, all alone. I moved to tap her on the shoulder and remembered the no touching rule.

‘Your parents aren’t into family send-offs?’ I asked.

‘They’re busy, you know with the
dentist
convention.’

‘Hey, Adam,’ said Jake, clutching an orange plastic bag from Croxton Hardware and Comics. ‘Yo, Corina.’

She stared at him. ‘Never
yo
me!’

‘Guess what’s in the bag,’ Jake said excitedly.

‘Let me take a wild guess,’ said Corina. ‘Not hardware.’

‘I stocked up for the summer,’ he said, revealing a stack of graphic novels. ‘I don’t think they have comic shops in the wilderness.’

A big bus rounded the corner and musically honked its horn. It sounded like a war cry from a tribal drumbeat. The destination sign announced ‘No Stop Till Nowannakidda’, and as the bus stopped, its door hissed open, a grinning camp director leaned out and invited us to: ‘Climb on for a one-way ticket to summer fun!’

He introduced himself as Gordon, but claimed his camp name was ‘Growl’, which he said while embarrassingly impersonating a bear.

Growl wore cargo shorts, an open plaid shirt over a white T-shirt and a sweat-stained baseball cap over his flowing, golden hair. He looked like a twenty-something surfer who’d been kicked off the waves one too many times.

‘All aboard, kids!’ he called. ‘I’ve got a checklist and I intend to check it. And parental types, give your kids one last squeeze. It’s camp time for them!’

He called off our names one by one, and each of us, except for Corina, gave our parents a goodbye hug.

Once everyone was aboard and settled in surprisingly clean and comfortable seats (with seat belts I might add!), the bus driver, a grim, gaunt-looking man, started the engine.

I grabbed a seat beside Corina, right behind Nesto.

She twitched when the door closed. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea, Adam.’

Thirty human kids were locked inside a steel bus with one hungry vampire.

She licked her lips and I whispered into her ear, ‘Be strong, Corina.’

Corina smiled. ‘You’re a good friend, Adam.’

Growl announced that the trip would take about ten hours – four hours to the border and then another six or so to reach the woods where Camp Nowannakidda was nestled in ‘an ancient native forest filled with wonder and excitement’.

‘And mosquitos?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ he said with bizarre enthusiasm. ‘There’s a lot of bloodsucking at Camp Nowannakidda.’

‘They have no idea,’ said Corina, pinching her nose.

I shook my head at Corina. ‘Just keep the cravings at bay.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ she said with a nasal voice that made her sound a bit like a cartoon character. But since I valued our friendship and my limbs intact, I wasn’t ever going to tell her that. She unpinched her nose and took a big breath in. ‘I can smell the blood moving though everyone on this bus. Well, not you, Adam, and not Ernesto because he mostly smells of must and rotten roadkill.’

‘Did you say roadkill?’ Nesto asked, turning around. He was sitting in the seats in front of us. ‘Hey, have either of you guys ever been to camp before?’

Both Corina and I shook our heads.

‘This is the first summer when I haven’t been forced on a Meltzer family road trip.’

‘My parents haven’t exactly encouraged mingling with the masses,’ Corina said. ‘When we visited my relatives in Transylvania last summer, Mom sent me off to a sort of summertime finishing school with “our kind” and I suppose that was like camp for vampires. We mostly learned how to be snooty and aloof.’

I caught Ernesto’s eyes widen. We were both thinking the same thing:
that explains a lot
.

‘What?’ Corina snapped, seeing our silent understanding.

‘I’m excited about the food,’ said Nesto.

‘Somehow,’ I said, ‘I don’t think camp catering is going to be our finest meals.’

‘Nah,’ Ernesto laughed. ‘I’m excited for the
wild
food. I’m thinking moose, beaver, deer, maybe even a bear. A chupa can’t live on squished squirrels forever, Adam. It isn’t natural.’

‘I honestly don’t know whether to be impressed with your optimism or disgusted by your appetite.’

‘Why not both?’ he chirped.

Corina sighed. ‘I suppose they’ll have nothing vegan. Good thing I packed a duffel bag full of candy.’

‘Apparently there’ll be doughnuts,’ I said.

‘Now you’re talking, zom-boy.’

‘My mom ate, like, ten at the presentation,’ said Ernesto. ‘She said they were to die for.’