My Zombie Hamster (13 page)

2:30 p.m
. Charlie wasn’t at school today, so I stopped at her place on the way home.

She was huddled on the couch beneath a blanket, watching reruns of
Friends
on TV. She didn’t look good. She was really pale and sweating. “What happened to you?”

“No idea,” she said. “Must have caught something out in the nature.” She said the words “the nature” as if it was something alien and evil. “Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”

“I’m going tomorrow.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll see you around. No offense, but you look really sick, and I don’t want to catch whatever it is.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

“No worries,” I said, then hurried home.

3:00 a.m
. Well, that was interesting. I was asleep earlier tonight when I got a text message from Charlie.

“On roof. Need company.”

I got out of bed and slid the window up, leaning as far out as possible where I could just see Charlie’s house. Their garage was attached to the side of their house, and Charlie was sitting on its roof, wrapped in a thick blanket. She saw me and waved.

I ducked back in and threw on some clothes, then dragged my own blanket off my bed, sneaking downstairs and out the back door. I climbed over the fence, then hopped onto the woodshed and up onto the garage.

I sat down next to Charlie and pulled the blanket over my shoulder. She was staring up at the moon.

“How you feeling?”

“A lot better, actually.”

I looked at her closely. She still looked really pale. Like, white as snow pale. She had stopped shivering, though.

“You should still go to the doctor. You look terrible.”

“Gee, thanks.”

And then she got a bit weird. She started talking about the old days, about our time in preschool, that kind of thing. About the time Calvin got lost in the forest and we all went out looking for him, the time we all snuck into the neighboring school and toilet-papered their basketball court. The time the four of us all went down Town Hill (that’s the really steep hill in the middle of Edenvale) on our bikes, forcing all the cars to pull over, and how a police officer eventually caught us. The main thing we all remembered about this was seeing our reflections in his mirrored sunglasses as he gave us a lecture.

I wondered why she was bringing all this stuff up, but after a while it didn’t matter. We were both laughing and talking about all the stupid stuff we’d done, talking about who we liked at school, who we didn’t like. I even told her about Erin, and to my surprise she didn’t laugh or mock me.

It was … nice. Despite the cold, despite how late it was, it was cool to just sit there and chat.

After a couple of hours we trailed off into silence. I looked over and saw Charlie had fallen
asleep. I let her sleep for a while, but after another half hour I decided to wake her up. Lying on the cold roof couldn’t be doing much for her illness.

I nudged her, but she didn’t move. I had to really shake her before her eyes flickered open again. She stared at me as if she didn’t know who I was.

“Charlie?” I said.

Nothing.

“Hey, Charlie. You okay?”

She didn’t budge. And it was starting to freak me out, the way she was just looking at me.

“Charlie, I think you should go inside now.”

She stared at me for another few seconds, then finally blinked. She looked around, confused. At the garage roof we were sitting on, at the houses around her, then finally at me.

“Matt?”

“Yes. Matt. Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I … I …” She closed her eyes. “I don’t feel so good. I think I’d better get to bed.”

“Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow. But seriously, you need to go to a doctor. You’ve probably made yourself worse sitting out here.”

She stood up and made her shaky way through the window that led directly into her room.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23

8:00 p.m
. Well … I don’t know how to even begin describing today. It’s been … hectic. I still feel sick. So much went on.

I should probably start at the beginning.

4:15 a.m
. I was woken up when it was still dark by the wail of sirens outside. I leaped out of bed to see the black vans of the Zombie Squad come roaring down our street like we were in some big blockbuster movie.

I wondered why they were here.

But then I felt a sick ball of fear surge in my stomach, because the vans skidded to a stop outside my house.

My first thought was they’d found out about Snuffles. That they were coming for Dad. I was about to warn him to run when I saw the Zombie Police pile out of their vans and run, not toward my house, but to Charlie’s.

I glanced to the garage roof, where we had spent our time talking before we went to bed.

And there, climbing out her bedroom window, was Charlie.

She ducked down low so the lone Zombie Squad officer waiting on the street didn’t see her.

What was going on?

I hurried downstairs. My parents were up, staring out the front window, so they didn’t see me as I ran out the kitchen door and got over the back fence, onto the woodshed, and up onto the garage roof.

“
Psst!
” I said. “Charlie!”

She whirled around to face me.

If I thought she looked ill earlier it was nothing compared to how she looked now. Her face was as white as the moon. Her eyes were wide and dark, filled with fear.

“Charlie. What’s going on?”

“Matt,” she said in a low voice. She slid along
the roof toward me. I noticed that she was holding something in her hand. Not only that, but it looked like she had a really deep cut on her forearm.

“Why is the Zombie Squad here?” I asked.

“Um … I think I might be in a bit of trouble.”

She took my hand and placed it against the middle of her chest. I tried to pull away, but her grip was like a vise. I couldn’t budge.

“What are you …”

My voice trailed away as I suddenly realized what I was feeling.

Or rather, what I
wasn’t
feeling.

Charlie didn’t have a heartbeat.

My eyes met hers, and she held up her hand. She was holding a small piece of metal about the size of a postage stamp. I recognized it immediately.

Her lifechip.

I took a hasty step back, feeling my world come crashing down around me as my brain actually made sense of what I was seeing.

Charlie was dead.

But she was still walking around. Which meant …

 … Charlie was a deadbeat.

I shook my head in denial. It couldn’t be. But it was. She had no heartbeat. I opened my mouth to shout for the Zombie Squad, but then I hesitated. Charlie was looking at me, her eyes filled with fear and worry. That wasn’t how a zombie looked at you. They looked at you the way I look at a takeout burger a week into one of Mom’s health-food kicks.

I shook my head in confusion. “What happened?” I whispered.

“Well, I’m just guessing here, Matt. And it’s an
educated
guess. I think I’m dead and have somehow come back as a deadbeat, and the Zombie Squad is here to make sure I don’t kill everyone in town.”

“But … you’re talking. You’re … you’re
Charlie
.”

“Mmm. It’s a puzzle.” There was the sound of breaking doors from inside her house. “But do you think we can chat about it later, when we’ve gotten rid of them?”

I studied her face in the moonlight, wondering what to do. She was a zombie. A deadbeat. Every lesson I ever learned growing up, every badly
made public service announcement video we’d been forced to watch was screaming at me to run away. To get as far away from Charlie as possible.

But it was surprisingly easy to ignore that voice.

Because … well, because it was Charlie crouching before me. I knew that. She was my best friend, and I definitely wasn’t going to betray her to the Zombie Squad.

I grabbed the lifechip from her. They would use it to track her. That’s why she’d taken it out.

“Wait here.”

I slid back down the roof, climbed over the fence, then moved along the side of our house. (I thought I caught a glimpse of many squirrel eyes watching me from the tree outside my window, but I didn’t have time to check.) I crouched down behind a bush, then darted out from cover and around to the other side of the lead Zombie Squad van. I dropped the lifechip through the window, then sneaked back around and straightened up when I got to my lawn.

“Hey!” I called.

The helmeted officer whirled around to face me. I pointed down the street.

“I just saw a deadbeat running that way. About two houses down.”

The officer quickly pulled up a little monitoring device that beeped like the proximity alert thing in
Aliens
. I really hoped it only tracked the signal a few yards. Anything more precise and he’d discover my trick.

I was in luck. He held up the device, and it was pinging steadily. But then, it had been pinging steadily since they arrived at the house.

“That way?” he asked, nodding along the street.

“Yup. A real ugly one, too. All shambling and moaning.” I put my arms up and shuffled across the grass to demonstrate. “I think I heard her say, ‘Braaaains.’ ”

The officer spoke quickly into his walkie-talkie and climbed into the van. He started the engine and roared off down the street. A second later the others ran out of Charlie’s house, piling into their vans. Their proximity sensors were pinging a lot slower as the lifechip drew away. They took off after the first van, leaving the street in silence once again. Hopefully they’d spend a good while chasing each other around town.

Meanwhile, I had to hide Charlie.

I turned around to find Mom and Dad standing in the door with their arms folded.

“Matt, I advise you to make the explanation you are about to give
phenomenally
good,” Mom said.

I tried desperately to think of a convincing lie, but at that moment Charlie appeared and came to stand next to me. Her mom ran out of their house, saw us, and hurried over. She grabbed Charlie by the shoulders.

“What’s happening?” she said, her voice tight with worry. “Why is the Zombie Squad here?”

“Well,” I started to say, “it’s a funny story—”

“Matt,” said Charlie. “Don’t.”

I stopped talking. Charlie shrugged off her mom’s hands and turned to face our parents. “Everyone, I’ve got some bad news.” Then she smiled. She actually smiled. “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but … I think I’m a teenage zombie.”

“You’re not a teenager,” I pointed out.

Charlie punched me in the arm. “It’s called dramatic license, you idiot. Way to ruin a moment.”