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  To my amazing agent, Gemma Cooper—this fish wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you for believing in Frankie and in me.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  The Mystery of the Zombie Vacation

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  To Be a Zombie Or Not to Be a Zombie … That is the Question

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Copyright

  THE MYSTERY OF THE ZOMBIE VACATION

  CHAPTER 1

  THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

  Pradeep looked even greener than Frankie’s zombie goldfish eyes as we sat in the back of my dad’s car. And every time Dad screeched round another bend, Pradeep turned a deeper shade of green. We were on our way to the vacation place that Dad had booked. Usually only Dad, my Evil Scientist big brother Mark, Pradeep’s dad and his evil computer-genius big brother Sanj went on the Big Summer Weekend. But this year Sanj was at computer camp, and for the first time Dad said me and Pradeep were old enough to come. Nothing was going to wreck this weekend!

  Not Pradeep, who was just about to hurl for the fifth time in four hours (I could tell because he had that surprised look on his face again). Not Sami, Pradeep’s three-year-old sister, who had to come with us because as soon as our moms heard Pradeep and I were going away too, they booked themselves on a Massage and Mud Pack weekend. (Which I didn’t understand at all. Moms hate mud on your shoes. They really hate mud on the living room carpet. But apparently they love it on their faces. Who knew?) This weekend wouldn’t even be ruined by Mark not saying a word to me since he found out that Pradeep, Sami, and I were coming. If only he wouldn’t thump me too, then it would be perfect.

  “Bag,” Pradeep mumbled as we went over a bump in the road.

  “Bag,” I said to Sami as she bounced in her car seat next to me. She passed me one of the stack of airplane sick bags that Pradeep’s mom had packed for him for the journey. I unfolded it and passed it to Pradeep. Pradeep’s mom gets these super-strong sick bags off the Internet because they can hold loads without breaking. They make the best splat bombs ever ’cause they never burst until they hit their target. It seemed a shame to waste them on actual car sickness. But a kid’s gotta do what a kid’s gotta do.

  “Bleeech!” Pradeep filled the sick bag and then stared out the window.

  “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Sami sang from her seat.

  Dad looked straight ahead at the winding road. “About twenty minutes maybe,” he said.

  Pradeep’s dad was looking at his smartphone. “It’s 13.2 miles exactly to the destination.” Pradeep’s dad could get a job as one of those GPS things in cars. He’s got the perfect voice for it. You would totally believe that he knew where he was going, even if he didn’t. I don’t think he would fit on the dashboard though.

  “If you look toward the sea, you can see the lighthouse from here,” Dad said.

  Pradeep, Sami, and I all craned our necks to look. The lighthouse was tall and white like a swirly whipped vanilla ice-cream cone sticking up out of the sea. That is, if swirly whipped vanilla ice-cream cones had giant lights at the top of them. It jutted out into the bay so the water lapped against it.

  Mark sat slumped in the back of the car behind us, flicking through Evil Scientist magazine. This month’s cover feature was called “How to Take Over the World in Ten Easy Steps.” He had his earbuds in and didn’t even look up when Dad spoke.

  “It’s awesome, Mark. An actual lighthouse,” I said to him.

  Mark shot me an evil glare. “There is nothing awesome about this moron-fest vacation.” He pulled his hood up over his head. “You losers have made this the lamest trip ever.”

  The cooler that was under Sami’s feet started shaking. I lifted the lid to investigate. The eyes of Frankie, my zombie goldfish, glowed green as he batted cans of Coke against the sides of the cooler with his fins. He must have heard Mark’s voice and gone all zombie mega-thrash fish. He still held a grudge against my brother for trying to murder him with his Evil Scientist toxic gunk. Luckily, Pradeep and I shocked Frankie back to life with a battery, and ever since, he’s been our friend and fishy bodyguard. I hoped Frankie would calm down soon.

  “Swishy fish!” Sami shouted.

  I put my finger to my lips and turned to Sami. “Shhhhhh!”

  “What was that, precious?” asked Pradeep’s dad.

  “Uh, I think she’s just excited about seeing fish in the sea,” I said, covering for her.

  Sami giggled and I carefully closed the lid of the cooler. Safe for now.

  As Pradeep and I looked out the window, we saw a thick layer of fog hanging over the lighthouse, wrapping itself around a barely visible sign. I squinted to read it. WELCOME TO EEL BAY, it said in big letters, and then in smaller print that looked like it was painted on just yesterday, DON’T FEED THE EELS! ESPECIALLY THE EVIL ONE!

  CHAPTER 2

  THE EVIL EEL OF EEL BAY

  Pradeep was still green, but he gave me a look that said, “That sign said there was an evil eel? Why is it everywhere we go there is something evil?” At the same time, his mouth was saying, “Next bag.”

  I totally understood the look and shot him one that said, “We so have to find out about that,” while I passed him the bag. Who says kids can’t multitask?

  We pulled up outside the lighthouse just as it was starting to get dark. The beacon in the lighthouse tower glowed through the fog and made the place look like the set of some old scary movie. Goose bumps spread over my arms, and I got that creepy feeling of millipedes wriggling awake in my stomach.

  Pradeep looked less green as soon as he got out of the car. He unloaded the row of sick bags at his feet into the garbage can by the driveway. Sami jumped down and ran over to her dad.

  “Want to see the sea!” she squealed.

  “Not tonight, precious,” Pradeep’s dad said, scooping her up on to his shoulders. “Tomorrow the sea. Tonight—dinner, then bed.”

  Mark slid out of the car and looked around. “Stupid lighthouse.” He looked at me and Pradeep. “Stupid morons. Stupid vacation.”

  I jumped out of the car, and Pradeep and I pulled out the cooler.

  “Come on, Mark,” Dad said. Dad hadn’t figured out yet that trying to get Mark excited about anything that wasn’t evil was basically a lost cause. “It’ll be fun. We’ll go fishing tomorrow.”

  The cooler started shaking again. I put my foot on it to try to stop it. It looked like I was tapping my foot to the beat of some random imaginary song.

  “I, um, don’t think I want to catch fish, Dad,” I said.

  “If you don’t help catch them, you can
’t eat them. That’s the rule on these vacations, isn’t it, Mark?”

  Mark nodded but glared. He was not going to forgive us for coming on his and Dad’s annual weekend away.

  “But I don’t want to eat any fish,” I said loud enough for Frankie to hear through the cooler.

  “I’ve decided to become a pescatarian,” Pradeep announced, “so I won’t eat fish either.”

  “Pescatarians eat fish, but not other meat,” Pradeep’s dad said.

  “Then I’ll be whatever it is that doesn’t eat fish,” Pradeep said. “An anti-pescatarian?”

  “OK. More fish for us then, right, Baskhar?” my dad said to Pradeep’s father.

  The cooler stopped shaking. Then I heard a voice that made me start shaking.

  “You the city folk then?” The gravelly mumble came from the doorway of the lighthouse.

  A man stepped forward so we could see him. Or he stepped forward so he could see us better in the fading light. Or he stumbled out because one foot had decided that it would walk but hadn’t got around to telling the other foot yet. I think it was mostly the third option.

  This guy was definitely the oldest person I had ever seen. Older than Gran, older than the crossing guard we have to help us cross the street outside school, even older than that really old guy in that alien movie who spent light years in suspended animation. He was wearing a battered green raincoat that looked as if it could keep out a flood. His head was covered with a flat cap, and what showed of his face looked like one of those 3-D maps of deserts that they have in school, showing sand dunes where his chin should be.

  I suddenly realized why he looked familiar and was just about to tell Pradeep when he shot me a look that said, “He’s like a lighthouse keeper from a Scooby-Doo cartoon. At some point this weekend he has to say, ‘I’d have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!’”

  I shot Pradeep a look that said, “YES!” and then one that said, “Hey, if he’s the creepy bad guy, does that make us the meddling kids?”

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” The ancient lighthouse keeper’s voice cut through the fog like a pirate’s rusty knife. He stared straight at Pradeep and me.

  If this was a scary movie, this would be the point where you shout at the people in the movie to get back in their car and go home.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA-QUEL

  Pradeep opened his mouth. For a second I thought he was going to say, “If there was a cat hanging off my tongue, it probably would be hard to speak, not to mention very painful.” Instead he said, “I’m Pradeep and this is Tom, Sami, and Mark.” He smiled at the old man like he was talking to the head teacher in full trying-to-get-us-out-of-detention mode. That smarmy smirk is Pradeep’s speciality. I don’t know how many detentions he’s got us out of with it, but it’s gotta be in the hundreds.

  “And I’m John and this is Baskhar,” added Dad.

  The old man shook the dads’ hands, then nodded over at us and grunted, “Better come in then.”

  “In the sea, in the sea!” Sami bounced on her dad’s shoulders.

  “There’s no going in the water at night.” The old man turned to Sami. “It’s dangerous enough in the daytime, when you can see the eels … but at night they can sneak up on ya.”

  “Do you mean the evil eel?” I piped up.

  “Where did you hear about the evil eel?” He spun around and glared at me. “Has word of the monster spread to the cities?”

  “Um, it was on the sign coming in,” Pradeep said. “So is it really evil or just mostly evil?”

  Mark pulled his earbuds out of his ears. “There’s an evil eel? Cool.”

  “It is not cool, young man,” the lighthouse keeper growled. “It’s evil and nasty and a danger to man and boat alike.”

  “Cool,” Mark repeated, and put the earbuds back in.

  The lighthouse keeper muttered something about “teenagers today” as we carried all our stuff into a large round living room at the bottom of the lighthouse.

  As the lighthouse keeper stoked the fire, he told us more about the eel.

  “A few months back the evil beast appeared. No one knows from where. He’s the biggest eel ever to pass through these waters and has a jaw that can snap an oar in two.”

  “Surely that’s an exaggeration,” Pradeep’s dad said, hugging Sami tightly as she sat on his lap.

  The lighthouse keeper pulled out two pieces of an oar from under the couch. The thick wood had clearly been snapped by something with a huge mouth and lots of teeth. I decided that I didn’t want to meet whatever did that to the oar.

  “I’m sure he just tells these stories to keep the tourists interested,” my dad said, ruffling my hair and giving me a look that either said, “Don’t worry, sport!” or, “Yum, Spam for dinner!” (I’m not really up on reading my dad’s looks, and the two are pretty similar.)

  “I wish it was just some story made up to bamboozle the likes of wide-eyed landlubbers like you,” the old man said. “But the truth is, it’s kept most folk away. The monster keeps jumping out of the water, nearly capsizing the boats. People are scared to death of it. You’re the only tourists booked this summer. If someone doesn’t catch that evil eel soon, that’ll be it for this lighthouse and for Eel Bay.”

  Sami yawned and snuggled into her dad’s shoulder.

  “It looks like the little one is bored of all this talk about eels. So let’s talk about dinner,” said the old man with a grin. “On the menu tonight … is eel pie and green jelly.”

  Pradeep went green again and ran out the door.

  CHAPTER 4

  DOWNRIGHT DASTARDLY DEEDS

  Pradeep and I threw our stuff on the bunk beds in our room near the top of the lighthouse. Then we opened the cooler and gave Frankie some food—green jelly that I’d snuck out from dinner. Being a zombie goldfish, Frankie eats only green food: mouldy bread, pond scum—the grosser the better.

  As he gobbled up the green goo, we talked about the evil eel.

  “Do you think an eel could really bite an oar in half like that?” I asked Pradeep.

  “I’ve heard of conger eels that are over eight feet long,” he said.

  I tried stepping across the floor to measure that out. Then I gave up. “How big is that?” I asked.

  “It could hang off the basketball hoops at school and still touch the floor,” Pradeep answered.

  I was trying to picture a mega-sized eel snapping an oar in two when we heard a stomping coming down the stairs. Mark was in the room above us, Pradeep’s dad and Sami were below us, and Dad was below them, next to the old lighthouse keeper’s room. I saw his bedroom door when I helped Dad carry up the bags.

  It had a big sign on it that said, NO MEDDLING KIDS! with a smaller sign nailed on top saying, EVER!

  Mark stomped into the room without knocking, almost flattening Pradeep as he kicked open the door.

  “Morons,” he said, “you’re not gonna wreck my vacation and you are not gonna wreck my evil plan. Got it?”

  “We don’t even know what your evil plan is, so how can we wreck it?” I said.

  “You won’t ever guess what it is, ’cause it’s way too evil and sinister and … dastardly,” Mark replied.

  “Did you just use the word dastardly in real life?” Pradeep asked.

  “It’s the word of the day on the calendar that came free with Evil Scientist magazine.” Mark scowled. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter ’cause my evil plan to catch the evil eel is so secret…” He stopped and banged his palm against his forehead. “Look, just stay out of it. Or else!” He leaned over me menacingly and the millipedes in my stomach not only woke up but started having a party. This wasn’t good.

  Just as Mark was about to show Pradeep and me what he meant by “Or else!” Frankie jumped out of the cooler, whacked Mark across the face with his tail and flipped back into the chilly water.

  “What the…?” Mark stumbled back. “You brought the moron g
oldfish!” Then he rubbed his hands together. “Even better. Now I can flush that stupid fish once and for all.”

  “No, wait!” I shouted. “If you leave Frankie alone, then we won’t tell Dad that you’re going to catch the evil eel.” It wasn’t the best deal, but it was all I could come up with at the time.

  “We promise not to try to stop you, but maybe you should leave it alone, Mark,” Pradeep said. “The eel could be dangerous.”

  Ever since he became an Evil Scientist when he got a chemistry set from our grandparents and tried to toxic-gunk Frankie to death, Mark has had the creepiest Evil Scientist laugh.

  “You’ve got a deal, morons.” He grinned. “Just keep the fish away from me, or he might end up as eel bait.” Then he laughed his biggest Evil Scientist laugh ever, which in that creepy old lighthouse sounded off-the-chart scary: “Mwhahahahahahahahahaha!”

  Frankie thrashed around in the cooler and glared his hypno-green stare at Mark. Normally, a stare like that would have someone hypnotized and under Frankie’s control in a second, but Mark just stared back at him and grinned. “Ha! Patented Evil Scientist hypnotic-stare-repellent contact lenses, so don’t even bother, fish!” Then he strode out of the room and slammed the door.

  Pradeep and I stared at the door for a second before either of us spoke.

  “So, there’s an evil eel out to get everybody, an Evil Scientist out to get the evil eel, and a zombie goldfish out to get the Evil Scientist,” I said. “This vacation gets more like a Scooby-Doo episode every second.”

  CHAPTER 5

  DO THE ZOMBIE-ZOMBIE SHAKE

  The next day started with a thud! and an ugh!

  The thud! was the sound of me rolling out of the top bunk and landing on the floor next to Pradeep, who had rolled out of his bunk too.

  The ugh! was the sound I made as I got up and rubbed my head.

  “Pradeep, what time is it?” I asked, shaking my head to wake up my brain.