Attack of the Shark-Headed Zombie (3 page)

“Wait!” Keats shouted. “The button says it’s only for emergencies.”

“I think this counts,” Henry said. Still on his back, he jabbed the button with his foot.
Suddenly a
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
filled the house.

“What did you do?” Keats yelled.

The alarm kept ringing. The windows and the front door started to fade. Then they were just gone. In their place was a solid wall.

The cousins were safe from the zombie … at least for now.

AFTER A FEW
seconds the alarm stopped. The house was silent.

“Stunner,” Henry said.

Keats and Henry lay on the carpet in the front hall, trying to catch their breath.

“What just happened?” Keats finally said. He stood up slowly. His baseball cap had turned around when he fell. He fixed it and looked around the room.

It was empty except for an old chair and a coatrack in the corner. Keats ran his hand over the wall where the front door used to be. The wall was smooth and solid.

“Where’s the door?” Keats asked. “And the windows?”

“I don’t know.” Henry got to his feet, too. “Probably the alarm made them disappear. You know, to protect whatever is inside the house. It must be some kind of magic.”

“That’s crazy,” Keats said. “There’s no such thing as magic—”

Blam!
A sudden pounding on the wall next to Keats made him jerk back.

The zombie was on the other side of the wall trying to get inside.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
The wall shook but remained sturdy.

“A shark-headed zombie is on the porch and the front door just vanished,” Henry said.
“Ready to change your mind about magic, Keats?”

“Okay, okay,” Keats said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is magic.” His stomach was flip-flopping like crazy.

“Don’t panic,” Henry said. “It will take time for the zombie to break through. We’ll be okay for a while.”

Keats looked to see if Henry was scratching his chin. He wasn’t. Keats felt a little bit better knowing Henry was telling the truth.

“We need to come up with a plan to get out of the house,” Henry said. “Thanks to the alarm, the door and windows are gone. We’re trapped.”

Keats thought for a second. “I have an idea,” he said. He held up the note from Mr. Cigam. “See where Mr. Cigam says he’ll take us home when we finish the to-do list?”

Henry snapped his fingers. “That’s it! We just have to do all the jobs on the list. And Mr. Cigam will come back and get us out of here.”

They both leaned over the note and read the jobs Mr. Cigam had left for them.

• Weed the garden
  .
  
• Bring the box of lightbulbs down from the attic.
  
• Battle and defeat the shark-headed zombie.
  
• Sweep the garage.
  

“Okay,” Keats said. “We weeded the garden. So that’s done. The next thing we have to do is bring the lightbulbs down from the attic—”

“And then battle and defeat the shark-headed zombie,” Henry said, skipping ahead. “But if the zombie is magical, we’ll need magic to fight it. Like a spell. Or maybe a wand—”

“A wand!” Keats said. “At the end of the note, Mr. Cigam says there’s an extra wand in the kitchen sink. Where’s the kitchen?”

Both boys turned to gaze down the long hallway that led out of the front room. They could see a refrigerator through a doorway at the end of the hall.

“Let’s go,” Henry said, already moving. Keats followed close on Henry’s heels. He couldn’t wait to get away from the zombie pounding on the wall.

The instant they left the front room something strange happened.

The doorway they had just passed through shimmered. Then it vanished and became part of the wall. They walked through the next door-way and it happened again. The doorway was gone and a wall stood in its place.

“It must be part of the alarm system,”
Keats said. “I bet every time we go through an opening, it disappears. Just like the front door and the windows. We can’t go back the way we came.”

“We better stick close together,” Henry said. “If I go through a doorway without you and it fades away, we’ll be split up.”

The boys walked through the last doorway into the kitchen at the same time. They watched that door turn into a wall, too.

The kitchen was messy but looked pretty normal. It had an old stove, a counter stacked with dirty dishes, and the big gray refrigerator. Another door was on the other side of the room.

Keats looked for a phone to call for help. There wasn’t one, but he spotted something else. A thick, dusty book sat on the kitchen table. Keats went over to it and read the cover. The book was called
How to Zap Anything.
A bookmark was stuck inside. Keats flipped to the marked page and read it.

The rest of step three was gone. The page was torn. It was almost as if something had taken a bite out of it.

“You’ve got to see this, Henry!” Keats said. “Mr. Cigam found a spell to zap the zombie with the wand. But it’s missing the most important part of—”

“Ahhhhh!” Henry interrupted. He was standing by the counter with his back to Keats.

Keats jumped. “What!” he demanded. “What is it now?”

“Oh man. This is just nasty.” Henry held up a plate covered in furry mold. “When’s the last time Mr. Cigam washed the dishes?”

“You scared me to death.” Keats shook his head. “Get serious, Henry. We have to find the wand. It must be in the sink buried under all those dishes.”

“What a grouch,” Henry said. “Being chased by a zombie must be bad for your funny bone—” Suddenly Henry stopped and shouted, “Ahhhhh!”

This time Keats didn’t freak out. “You need some new jokes, Henry.”

“Uh, Keats,” Henry said quietly. It was the voice he used when he didn’t want Keats to panic. “I think
you
found the sink.”

“Oh yeah?” Keats wasn’t going to fall for one of Henry’s pranks. “What makes you say that?”

“Because you’re standing in it,” Henry said. “Look at your feet.”

Keats did. Or tried to. He couldn’t see his feet. They were gone!

His sneakers had been sucked into the kitchen floor like it was quicksand.

“I’m sinking!” Keats shouted.

KEATS TRIED TO
pull his feet free. But he couldn’t budge. If anything, struggling only made him sink faster. The floor quickly rose to his shins. Soon he would be sucked all the way down.

Henry and the rest of the room were still on solid ground. This was the only part of the kitchen with a squishy spot.

“That must be what Mr. Cigam’s note meant
by the kitchen
sink
,” Henry said. “It’s some kind of sinkhole.”

The floor was up to Keats’s knees now. It was like sliding into taffy. “Henry, help me!” he yelled.

Thinking fast, Henry tied two crusty dish towels together and tossed one end to Keats. He grabbed it and Henry pulled. Just as Keats started to climb up, his foot bumped into something.

“There’s something jammed in here,” Keats said.

With one hand still on the towel rope, Keats reached into the spongy floor. There was a
gurgle
as he yanked out a small scepter, like a king might carry. Only this one had a lightbulb screwed into the top.

Keats flung the rod to Henry. He put it on the counter so he could keep pulling.

But crawling out of the sinkhole was getting harder. When Keats had tugged the rod free, it was like unclogging the drain in a bathtub. Things started going down the hole faster. The floor began to swirl a little as it spun around Keats.

The moving floor made the table tip over. Still open to the marked page, the
How to Zap Anything
book fell and skidded toward the pit.

“The spell!” Keats let go of the rope with one hand again. He reached for the book. But he was only able to grab one page. The page ripped off in his fingers and the rest of the book was sucked into the hole.

There was a
shuuuwmack
sound. Suddenly everything stopped swirling. With Henry’s help, Keats pulled himself onto solid ground.

“The book must have plugged up the hole again,” Keats said, getting to his feet. He uncrumpled the torn page in his hand. “But I saved the spell!”

“Great job, Keats,” Henry said, and picked up the rod on the counter. “Do you think this is the wand Mr. Cigam was talking about?”

Keats eyed it. “I thought a magic wand would look different. This is just a goofy stick with a lightbulb on top.” He shrugged. “But in this house, that’s weird enough to be right.”

“Good point,” Henry agreed.

BLAM!
The boys jumped as pounding started on the wall behind the counter.

Keats began to panic again. “The zombie is trying to break into the house! It’s right on the other side of that wall!”

Henry tried to calm him down. “That works out great,” he said. “We can try out the wand and the spell you found.”

Keats took a deep breath, then nodded. “It’s only part of the spell, but what do we have to lose?” he said. “After all, it’s called Zap a Zombie.”

The boys faced the wall where the zombie was pounding. Keats held the spell, and Henry held the wand.