My Zombie Hamster (3 page)

3:00 p.m
. Christmas dinner. Dry turkey. Lumpy gravy. Overcooked vegetables. Gran gleefully prodding her food and declaring it inedible.

Mom not happy.

SNUFFLES WATCH:
Snuffles slept all day, waking up only to stuff his cheeks full of food before returning to his bed.

Maybe we have some things in common after all.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26

Spent the day in bed playing video games. (With the control pad! Can you believe it?) But I didn’t have any peace. Mom kept telling me to get up and do something productive.

“Like you?” I asked.

“Yes. Like me.”

So I asked her if she wanted me to watch celebrity gossip on TV, read about it in a magazine, or talk about it on the phone for an hour to her friend.

She left me alone after that.

It’s reached a certain point in my dad’s work cycle. I’ve mentioned before that Dad is a writer. He writes these pulp science fiction books featuring
a guy called Atticus Pope. He’s on the fifth book right now, which has something to do with Atticus fighting Nazis on the moon. (You can tell my dad really loves the Indiana Jones and James Bond movies. His books are the same kind of thing. Atticus Pope foiling evil guys bent on stealing something priceless or taking over the world.)

But when Dad gets really into writing his books, he goes into a world of his own, wandering around the house in his robe, a toy gun in his hand, acting out the scenes before he writes them down. It’s very funny to watch.

He wandered out into the front yard once when he was really stuck on a book, testing out scenes, then shaking his head and trying out different versions. Mom filmed him on her phone and played it back to show him how ridiculous he looked. But if she thought it was going to embarrass him into stopping, she was very much mistaken. He watched the video silently, jumped up, gave Mom a kiss on the cheek, and said she’d solved the problem for him. Atticus needed a love interest who betrays him.

Then he disappeared into his office for the
rest of the afternoon. Mom wasn’t particularly impressed.

I’ve read Dad’s books. They’re pretty good. A bit old-fashioned, though. All ray guns and rocket ships. But he did give me permission to write a screenplay based on the stories.

I tried, but to be honest, it was pretty hard work, so I scrapped that idea and have been writing an original screenplay based on Atticus Pope. I’ll show it to Dad once it’s finished. I’m sure he’ll think it’s amazing. In fact, I reckon he’ll want to adapt my screenplay into his next Atticus Pope book.

I wonder how much he’ll pay me for that?

SNUFFLES WATCH:
Snuffles escaped from his cage. Don’t ask me how. Have searched everywhere but can’t find him. Haven’t told anyone yet. Contemplated buying a replacement before Mom and Dad notice. Realized I can’t. All the paperwork. Registering the pet, getting an all clear on the lifechip, that kind of thing. Plus, you need a guardian’s signature to own any kind of animal.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27

I’m getting worried about Katie. She’s always been a bit odd, but recently she’s been getting a lot worse.

Mom told me to call her for lunch. I did what I usually do, which is to scream out her name at the top of my lungs. Mom threw a dish towel at my face and told me to go and get her.

What is it with parents and unnecessary exercise? Or rather, what is it about parents forcing unnecessary exercise on their children? If we’d
both
shouted, Katie would have heard us, but instead of us putting our heads together to come up with a solution to the problem, Mom orders
me to do uncalled-for physical exercise. I get enough of that at school!

I found Katie staring at herself in the mirror, with tears streaming down her face.

I asked her what was wrong. Our eyes locked in the mirror. There was a brief pause, and then she said in a low, sepulchral (I looked that word up in the dictionary; it fits perfectly) voice, “Nothing’s wrong. I just like the taste of tears.”

I grinned and nodded as if I hadn’t heard a thing. “Well, that’s good. Lunch is ready,” I said, then bolted back downstairs.

Weird.

SNUFFLES WATCH:
Snuffles is back in his cage, sleeping under a pile of sawdust. He must have gotten bored and returned home. That’s a relief. Won’t have to explain to Mom and Dad how I managed to lose him after only a couple of days.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28

Besides Charlie, I have two other best friends, Calvin and Aren. (We all live on the same street, so I suppose it was natural that we formed a group.) I mentioned them before, but I thought I should describe them a bit more here.

Calvin is … how should I put it? He’s a bit slow.

For instance, when he types searches into the Web, even Google doesn’t know what he’s actually trying to spell.

His brother once convinced him you could buy nonstick glue so there wasn’t any gooey mess on your fingers, and he spent an entire day going from store to store asking if they stocked it.

Oh, and my personal favorite. He thought his
orange juice was trying to send him psychic messages because the carton said “concentrate” on the side. He’d stare at it for half an hour straight, just waiting for a sign. I asked what he thought was going to happen, and he said he was unsure. Either an alien race was going to contact him or his future self had discovered a method of communicating with him in the past and was going to send him messages that would make him rich.

Aren is the complete opposite. His parents are originally from Nigeria. They moved here before the zombie outbreak. Aren is so clever it’s scary. He watches
MythBusters
and tells us where the guys on the show went wrong with their testing. Which, to me, is amazing, because all of my science knowledge is taken from
MythBusters
. After each episode I text him to ask if he thinks they did it right.

Both guys came around today, and guess what? They both got the Runeswords! No Christmas character-building for them.

Life is so unfair.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29