SuperZero (11 page)

Now, I was holed up in a Lanther cave with no key, right? So the next part of what happened is hearsay. Which means I ‘hear'd it and other people ‘say'ed it, okay? Or in this case, wrote it, hoping to share credit in MY book. So don't go shooting me if you don't agree with anything or can't understand the spellings.

Double-Headmistress was in hospital, with Head 2 still in tire trouble. (That's meant to be dire trouble, but my friends suck at spelling.)

Vamp Iyer was in the hospital, recovering from his shock.

Mom was in the hospital, having fainted and hit her head on the heart monitor. (And they call them life-saving devices. This one almost killed my poor mom!)

Gra was in the hospital, yelling at everyone to leave the onions and treat his bunions.

Masterror was heading the Superhero School now, with a handful of very testy children in there. (TRex had written ‘tasty' children, the freak).

The Fly had flown back to the icebergs, saying he needed to cool off and think.

Tara Rumpum was running a continuing story on the TV channels about my strange disappearance. ‘Apparently, SuperZero has flown out of a fourteenth-floor hospital window, covered in blood, which his best friend sucked out of him. He has vanished into thin air, with a dozen hospital nurses as witnesses. The nurses say they saw him fly out and then poof, he was gone! Like a bubble! What will happen now to our brave, darling saviour of this city?'

In the middle of all this, she was called to go cover the events at the Superhero School. Apparently, there was something slimy going on. ‘Oh, that's okay,' Tara Rumpum said, ‘they have this one superkid called Slime Joos.'

That's not what it was, said the people, it was worse. The teachers who were left were all falling violently sick. They were puking purple, and were fighting each other off to reach the loo first.

Tara Rumpum had gone rushing over, sensing more exciting news and abandoning the ‘brave, darling saviour'. ‘The Superhero School teachers are all falling sick. Purple vomit. It is a sure sign that they are being poisoned! My
trusted sources say that it is all part of a large protest by the superkids. They have surely found a way to insect (spelling mistake by Lizzie Lizard, she meant ‘inject') poison into their teachers' very veins. The teachers are turning purple and will die soon, as their Double-Headmistress already is, in a hospital far away, with no one willing to give her even a drop of life-saving blood. The much-loved super master, the Fly, has been eaten alive by a lizard girl, and the other much-loved super master, Masterror is . . . er, well and being much loved.'

The beautiful, talented, quick and stunning Anna Conda is then supposed to have slid her tail right over Tara Rumpum's mouth to stop her from telling any more lies. (I am guessing Anna Conda wrote this part herself).

Blank had spent all day and all night floating above the city, invisible, searching for me. He finally found something the next day. No, not me.

On the outer-skirts (outskirts, Blank, outskirts!) of the city, where the houses gave way to open fields and the sound of the sea grew stronger, the landscape was punctuated by a tall tower that no one ever bothered about. People thought it was a deserted lighthouse or TV tower or something. Hovering close to that tower, Blank said that he heard a huge buzzing and in his excitement,
thought that the Fly had returned to save our entire sorry situation. So he went hurrying over (still invisible) to see what was happening. He flew to the single window at the top of the tower, and saw something that made him turn white (well, okay, he was invisible, so colours don't really matter, but still).

The circular room was full of glass cages, and in those cages were bees. Bees in the hundreds and thousands, maybe even millions (Blank is bad at maths, so I wouldn't count on this part).

There was a short, squat man with a very big head (Blank said, ‘You can't call him round, he's more oval, you know, like an eclipse' [he means ellipse—told you, bad at maths AND spelling!]) in front of the cages. Blank recognized him at once, he said, from our class on Super Enemies of Superheroes. He was the Eggstremely Dangerous Eggster. His special evil talent was to breed eggs and the young of strange creatures and train them to harm people for no reason. His last and most famous attack was when he hatched the eggs of pretty little clownfish which would snap the ankles off any tourists who went swimming in the sea. See, harm for no reason at all. You go to the beach to have a sunny day out and you come home without ankles!

Four Klo has it (Four Klo? Oh, he meant folklore) that the legendary Grazor had somehow managed to trap the snapping clownfish and save the city yet again! Eggster dived into the sea after threatening his revenge on Grazor,
the city and all its people, and ankles worldwide. He hadn't reappeared for all these years, probably because the threat of the little superkids from the Superhero School kept him in check.

So Blank sat with bated breath outside his window, looking at Eggster plan his new assault now that the Superhero School gang was laid out with poisoning and hospitalization and protests and all. Blank had to breathe at some point, of course, and that was . . . bad! Because Eggster suddenly rushed to the window and screamed, ‘I know someone's there! I can see the breath steaming on the window!' And Blank got such a scare that his hands, clutching on to the windowsill, reappeared. Eggster caught those hands and pulled poor Blank, now half un-blank, into his hellhole.

‘Who are you, spy?' shrieked Eggster.

‘No one, no one, no one,' cried Blank, terrified. ‘I'm not even there, see. I am not.' And he tried to disappear, but Eggster had him in a tight grip.

‘Who sent you, spy?' Eggster shook his hands till Blank felt they would just snap off (like those beach people's ankles).

‘No one, no one, no one,' Blank said. He later said nothing else was coming into his head.

‘Stop saying that,' shouted Eggster, ‘or I'll put you in with the bees this minute.' He pulled Blank towards the glass cage nearest him.

‘No, no, no,' said Blank then. ‘I won't tell no one, no one, no one.'

Eggster glared at him and shook his hands again. ‘Then reappear fully, immediately!'

So Blank's very frightened face appeared too. He tried to stall his entry into the cage of the angry bees by talking to Eggster. ‘What are the bees for?' he asked. ‘Because if they're for honey, I love honey.'

‘They're not for honey, they're for money.' Eggster went into peels of . . . (peals of) laughter. (Laughter, my dear Blank, I told him later, does not peel like oranges.)

Eggster continued (you know how evil geniuses always talk to their victims in movies?), ‘I have bred the most extreme weapons of mass destruction this time. From eggs through larvae to what you see now.'

‘Bees?' said Blank. ‘What do you want them to do? Sting people's ankles?'

Eggster frowned at him. ‘Are you trying to be funny, spy? I don't like funny spies.'

‘Oh, I'm not funny at all, I'm as funny as a boiled egg—no, no, no, I didn't mean that,' said Blank desperately. ‘So, the bees . . . what will they do?'

Eggster laughed a Sheryl laugh (I tried hard to figure that one out. I think he meant ‘shrill laugh' because Sheryl was the school librarian he was scared of). So he laughed a Sheryl laugh, and said, ‘I have engineered the bees after years of experimenting, so that now the bees will inject a powerful venom into people which will make them fatter and fatter till they burst out of their skins!'

Yikes! Evil! Evil! Evil! Blank cried out and began to shake his hands loose from Eggster's grip.

‘Ha, and you will be the first—my first gunny pig!' he told Blank. (I tried to explain to Blank later that it was ‘gunny sack' and ‘guinea pig', but Blank refused to believe me.) So Blank was Eggster's first gunny pig, and he was dragged squealing like a gunny pig towards the glass cage. And then Eggster held him with one strong hand, while he used the other to try and open the cage. But it was not
that easy. If he'd opened the glass cage, all the bees would have got out and stung Eggster instead.

So Eggster shoved Blank on to a stool, pulled a gun from his desk, and said, ‘Don't move or I'll shoot you.' He backed out slowly and put on his anti-bee suit. With the gun pointing at Blank all the time, he went to work on opening the latch.

And that's when Blank disappeared again.

Eggster immediately shot at that stool and shot around it and shot everywhere hysterically. But Blank, when he disappeared, had thrown himself
at
Eggster's feet, not
away
from him, and had reappeared just behind Eggster, and stayed behind him as Eggster kept shooting all around—and then—then—then—one of those bullets shot and cracked the glass cage. The glass shattered, and that was that.

The bees swarmed out, out of the crack, out of the glass cage, out of the window—and out into the city.

Now, I'm not sure just how much Blank made up, you know? To hear him tell it, he'd like saved the whole story, which seems a bit unfair, considering it's my story.

Anyway, to stick to MY story, even though he told this part of it: Blank had a brainweave! (Huh! I'm going to let his rotten spelling stay—serves him right for trying to outshine me.)

Blank whizzed away even faster than the bumbling bees, who kept after all, like bees do, flying up and down and around the place, with no idea whom they were supposed to go and inject.

Blank flew straight to Tara Rumpum (that was his brainweave and it was a pretty cool one, even I have to admit).

So there was Tara Rumpum standing on Main Street and attracting everyone's attention. ‘And the poisoned teachers of Superhero School are wriggling around in pain and puke, while Dr Betta Chance is trying to find out
what poisoned them. The good doctor says . . . eeeeeks, eeeeks, eeeeks!'

That was because Blank suddenly appeared right beside her, snatching her mic away. ‘Stop it!' he said. ‘I've got breaking news for you. This is your chance to save the city!'

Tara Rumpum gulped while the TV cameras captured every minute. Blank went on: ‘There's a herd of bees approaching. (Horde, Blank, horde—it's herds of deer—doesn't anyone watch wildlife TV?) The evil Eggster—remember him? He has been breeding them in his tower, and in about one hour, they will be herding all over the city.'

‘Bees,' smiled Tara Rumpum, trying to wrestle the mic back. ‘Bees are not breaking news, strange boy who is in patches.'

‘These bees are special. They are bread (oh, Blank!) by the Evil Eggster—remember him?—to sting people and make them fatter and fatter till they burst.'

Tara Rumpum stared at him. Blank danced in front of her. ‘Don't waste time or it will be because of you that everyone bursts.'

‘I don't want to become fatter,' she said, ‘this is a new red suit. It won't fit any more if I become fatter.'

‘This is not about your red suit! It's not about you! It's about people bursting all over the place like popped balloons. So tell everyone that there is a danger alert, and they should close up their houses and not let the bees in.'

Tara Rumpum gulped. A police inspector who was standing by put down his walkie-talkie and came to the mic. He announced quite seriously, ‘This seems to be absolutely true. My men have reported a swarm of bees like a black cloud coming in from the east. The superkids have always protected this city, and this little boy should be believed.'

‘But I'm wearing a new suit,' wailed Tara Rumpum, ‘I don't want to go home and sit at home in it.'

The inspector continued, ‘This is a police warning. We are ordering every shop to pull down its shutters and every school and office to send home its people, and every house
to close its doors and windows, and every person to sit in locked rooms till we find a solution.'

Blank said that the people disappeared even faster than he, Blank, could. In the blink of an eye, the entire street was empty. People rushed into cars, and cars raced off into building parking lots, and buildings closed up all their doors and windows.

The police inspector, too, drove off, and locked himself up with the other police staff inside the city's main police station. All the Very Important People in the city got on to their phones with each other—the mayor, the head of police, the big doctors, the judges—and tried to work out how to rid the city of these bees.

‘Perhaps we should call the Pied Piper,' someone might have said.

‘He's not real, he's just a story,' someone else might have said.

‘If you know so much, maybe
you
should go out and catch the bees,' another someone could have said.

The main thing is that no one was out, except of course, Tara Rumpum, who kept talking into her mic, ‘This is a huge disaster and no one will bring it better to you, live, than Tara Rumpum. I will be interviewing every one responsible to bring you the truth. I will be interviewing the evil Eggster, the bees, the boy who—where is the boy?'

Blank did not hang around, of course, to be stung by the bees either. He just turned invisible and then flew
around, watching what was happening. He said it was like a goats town.

A goats town? What's a goats town?

A GHOST town. Oh, okay.

So while Blank looked on at all this from his invisible state, he saw the black cloud of bees nearing, and he said a shiver went down his spy (I think he meant his spine. He must have been secretly quite thrilled to be called a spy by Eggster).

He also saw the evil oval shape of Eggster himself come chugging over, trying hard to keep up with this black cloud, dressed in his spacesuit thing so he wouldn't be stung by his own bees.

Blank, fearing for Tara Rumpum's life, whispered in her ear, ‘You need to get indoors soon, or cover yourself up, or you will burst out of your new red suit.'

Tara Rumpum jumped up. She then turned to her mic at once and said, ‘And now, the ghosts of this ghost town have come out to the streets, after the people have gone in. There are voices roaming around without bodies. Only I, Tara Rumpum, will bring you the whole truth—live!' But Blank noticed that she put on her yellow-hooded raincoat pretty quickly, and jammed on a helmet left by the police inspector as he raced off. (It said ‘Police' on it, which is how Blank knew.)

Even the cameraman had run off, leaving his camera rolling, with the footage going back to the studios, from
where the whole city, behind its locked doors, could see the brave Tara Rumpum, in her police helmet and yellow raincoat and red high-heeled shoes, bringing them the whole truth—live. Or at least, till she stayed alive.