CHAPTER 18
“Don’t you kids have to be at school soon?” Grandma said.
Aargh. I’d been hoping she’d forget.
“We…um…ah…”
“Now, you’re not to worry, Seb,” Grandma said, smoothing her skirt and patting her hair after her twerking demo. “Everything’s going to be just fine. Ava and I will hold the fort until you get back, won’t we, darling?” Ava didn’t answer. She was busy pushing her hand down the back of the sofa between Mum and Mrs Howard, looking for something.
Both Darren and Talia gave me a look. They probably expected me to come up with an excuse for us not to leave, but my brain was exhausted from all the brainstorming earlier and nothing sprang to mind.
I made a show of picking up my backpack. “Yeah, we’d better get going or we’ll be late. Come on, you guys.”
“Bye-bye, Seb,” Ava mumbled. She’d found her raisin box and was trying to work the last of the raisins out with her tongue.
A few minutes later, we were traipsing along the footpath—me, Darren and Talia—heading nowhere in particular.
“I don’t get it,” Talia said. “The music worked. They were dancing.”
“Yeah, for two whole minutes.”
“We should give it another go,” Darren said.
“What for?” I moaned. “As soon as the music stops, they’ll turn back into zombies.”
“We don’t know that,” said Darren. “Maybe it needed more time.” He sighed. “I keep thinking there has to be something more to all this.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that the three of us aren’t affected.”
“I thought that was obvious,” Talia replied. “It’s because we’re not hooked up to the Internet, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s not the whole story because we were on the Internet,” said Darren. “Seb uploaded the game onto the school server, remember?”
Not this again.
I swung around to face them. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” I thundered. “I didn’t know this was going to happen, okay!”
“Hey, no need to get your knickers in a twist,” Darren said, pulling me about by my t-shirt. “No one’s asking you to apologise.”
Talia rolled her eyes.
Darren went on, “What I meant was, you were connected to the net, and yet you weren’t affected. Why not? Why aren’t you a zombie, too?”
“It was only for a second. I wasn’t connected that long.”
“Hey, look!” cried Talia, grabbing my arm and forcing me to stop. We were close to school. I hadn’t even realised that’s where we were going. Talia squinted at the cluster of people near the school gate.
“It’s the kids from our class. Andrew, Penny, and some of the others. I can see a couple of girls I know from Room 12, too.”
“I can’t see any laptops. It looks like they’re all still okay!” Darren whooped.
We hurried forward to join them.
When we got there, everyone was talking. Complaining mostly.
“It’s crazy,” Penny said to me. “My parents never let me spend more than an hour on the computer. They’d shoo me outside. ‘Go on, off you go outside and get some fresh air,’ they used to say.”
I nodded. Mum and Dad used to say that too.
“Yeah,” Andrew said. “My olds are hanging around inside like a pair of vampire bats, sucking the juice out of their laptops.”
Penny put her hands on her hips. “It’s like they’re breaking their own rules. Mum didn’t even bother to cook dinner. I had to make sandwiches.”
“Someone has to do the cooking, don’t they?” one of the girls from Room 12 said. “My twin sister over there was on her tablet until midnight. I hardly got any sleep. This morning I felt like death warmed up, but I still had to make breakfast.”
Andrew bounced his basketball hard on the asphalt, and caught it again. “Yeah? Well, our washing smelled like cat pee. Only nobody told me you had to sort it before you stick it in the machine, did they? All my gear came out like it’d been dipped in blood.”
“You think that’s bad,” I said. “I had to change my sister’s stinky nappy.”
Andrew cuffed me on the arm. “Whoa, Seb. That’s gross.” He grinned, wrinkling his nose.
Someone clapped their hands and we all turned.
It was Talia. She’d climbed on top of the concrete wall. “Listen up, everyone,” she called using her class councillor voice.
Oh no, not another one of Talia’s speeches.
A couple of kids must have felt the same as me because there was some quiet groaning, but everyone shuffled closer.
“I know things have been difficult,” Talia said. “This apocalypse has been hard on all of us, but I want to tell you all to hang tight because we’re going to fix this.” She waved a hand in my direction. “Seb here has found a way to reverse the zombification—”
There was a roar. The kids cheered. Andrew clapped me on the back. “Why didn’t you say something? That’s awesome, man!”
“But,” said Talia, solemnly holding up a hand for silence, “unfortunately, Seb’s idea still needs some refining. His method snaps the zombies out of their trance, but only for few minutes...”
The crowd groaned.
“A few minutes! That’s not much use,” someone grumbled.
“It proves Seb’s on the right track though, doesn’t it?” said Darren. “All he needs is a bit more time.”
Penny wasn’t convinced. “I can’t see how more time will help. No offence Seb, but you’re pretty hopeless. You can’t even get your maths homework in on time.”
Talia grinned, the sun lighting up her face. “Penny, I agree that Seb’s approach is a little…unconventional, but then Albert Einstein was a terrible student too.”
Hang on a sec. Was Talia comparing me to Albert Einstein?
Penny’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yep,” said Darren. “The worst. Einstein was so bad at school, his teachers thought he was intellectually disabled.”
Darren, too? I felt a warm glow.
“In fact,” Darren went on, “Einstein had such a poor attitude to learning that he was expelled from school—and he was one of the most amazing scientists ever.”
Penny was chewing on her thumbnail. “You know,” she said, taking her thumb out of her mouth. “Mrs Pike probably would’ve expelled Seb yesterday, if this apocalypse thing hadn’t happened.”
Hey!
But Talia beamed. “There, see? That’s the spirit.” She clasped her hands together. “All we have to do is stay positive and stay off the Internet. We’re going to get through this. Trust me, we’re going to knock this Zombie Apocalypse out of the park.”