The Sea-Quel (6 page)

I took out the little pirate flag from my pocket and waved it, for all the good it would do. We were in danger, no matter how you looked at it. I wished I had twenty more flags to wave.

Then Pradeep got that look on his face that meant that he had a big idea. “The flag!” he cried. “We can signal for help. Maybe the dads and the lighthouse keeper will see it and come back.”

“But how can we signal to them?” I said. “They won't see us waving this flag from here.”

Pradeep grinned. “What would Batman do?” he said.

CHAPTER 14

SOZ—SAVE OUR ZOMBIE!

Pradeep, Sami, and I raced up the next flight of the fire escape to the very top of the lighthouse where the beacon was. We stood on the walkway directly in front of the light. Pradeep and I knelt down and tried to bend ourselves into S shapes, while Sami curled up into an
O
between us.

We were trying to spell
SOS
, which Pradeep said means “Save Our Souls.” Secretly, I tried to make my
S
look a bit like a
Z
so it could stand for
Save Our Zombie!
instead.

Hopefully the dads and the lighthouse keeper would see our signal and come back to shore.

Pradeep said that, technically, we should have spelled out
Mayday
, but we didn't have enough people for that.

At that moment, I looked down at the floor and noticed we were standing on what looked like a trapdoor. My first thought was,
Have we learned nothing from the booby-trap thing before?
But my second thought was,
Hang on! We can use this to get back into the room below and stop Mark!

As quietly as we could, we creaked open the trapdoor and looked down. There was a ladder leading right into the room.

Sami went first, then Pradeep, then me. We were halfway down the ladder when a gust of wind blew the trapdoor shut above our heads.

Slam!

Mark spun around and saw us all hanging on to the ladder. Our cover was totally blown! I tried to go back up through the trapdoor, but it was stuck.

“Morons! How did you…?” He stared at us angrily, then grinned and shook his head. “Never mind, you're too late anyway.”

At that instant, a bolt of lightning struck the rod on the roof.

The surge of electricity blew the lighthouse beacon out completely. With all the rain and the fog that had just started to roll in, it was as dark as night outside.

The same flash traveled down the pole to the eel in his kiddie pool. He flipped just like Frankie had done when we shocked him back to life.

Suddenly the eel reared up, knocking the lightning rod out of the pool and onto the floor. Electric sparks flew from its scales as it writhed. Its eyes tried to focus through a glow of zombie orange.

Mark had done it. He had created an evil zombie mega-eel!

CHAPTER 15

LIGHTHOUSE, FRIGHTHOUSE

Mark took a step toward his giant new zombie pet. “You're mine now and you'll do whatever I say,” he commanded. “Now, come here!”

The eel just stared at Mark with his glowing orange eyes.

“I said, come here, moron eel!” Mark shouted.

The eel slid out of the pool toward Mark. Its fins sent tiny electric pulses into the air that made all our hair stand on end. Now Sami, Pradeep, and I actually looked as scared as we felt.

The eel was right in front of Mark now!

“Stop,” he said, holding up a hand.

But the eel didn't pay attention. Instead it wound around Mark's legs and coiled around his middle until all you could see was Mark's head sticking out the top of a pile of scales and fins.

“Help!” Mark squelched.

Then I heard a gurgling in the drainpipe against the lighthouse wall, then a rattling of the metal pipe, and then finally a
whoosh
of water as Frankie shot out of the open end of the drain!

“Frankie!” I yelled.

He must have seen our bat signal and swum all the way back from out at sea!

Frankie slid across the floor toward the evil eel, flipped up in front of its face, and spat a mouthful of drain water at him. That got his attention.

The eel unwrapped itself from Mark and tried to swipe its tail at Frankie, but Frankie easily dodged the attack.

Mark crawled out of the way of the eel and over to the ladder.

“Go up!” he yelled.

“The trapdoor won't open!” I yelled back. “We need to come down!”

The only way out was through the door on the other side of the zombie eel.

By now, the two zombie pets were squaring off in the kiddie pool, preparing for a mega-zombie smackdown. (Just so you know, even though it would be an awesome name for a comic book, it's
not
an awesome thing to be stuck in the middle of.)

Frankie's green eyes glowed as he tried to hypnotize the evil eel. The evil eel's eyes glowed back in a burning, bright-orange zombie stare. Its huge body fizzed and sparked with electricity as it flung itself at Frankie. Frankie leaped in and out of the paddling pool and into the puddles of goopy green water that had splashed onto the floor. Neither of them seemed able to get the upper fin. It was like undersea championship boxing!

Then Sami jumped down from the bottom rung of the ladder, ran past Mark, and jumped between the two angry zombies.

“Stop fighting, naughty fishy things!” she yelled.

“Sami, no!” shouted Pradeep, scrambling down the ladder to get to her.

Both Frankie and the eel were in full zombie-stare mode—and Sami was caught in the zombie-stare crossfire! Suddenly Sami was looking both at the wall of the lighthouse and up the evil eel's left nostril. Her left eye glowed green and her right eye was glowing pale orange.

“Swishy fishy eel,” she mumbled.

Although he denied it later, that's when Mark totally squealed.

CHAPTER 16

SWISHY FISHY SMACKDOWN

I jumped down from the ladder and only just managed to grab Pradeep before he leaped in and got himself zombified too!

Sami was staring deep into the eyes of the evil eel. Her face suddenly looked very sad. The eel lowered his head and she went over and patted him behind his gills.

Then Sami turned to Frankie. “Don't be mean to Zarky,” she said, and wagged her finger at him.

“Zarky?” Pradeep gasped.

“Eel says his name is Zarky,” she said to us. “He's sad,” she went on. “He tries to play, but people scream and say go away. Some bad people on boats hook Zarky and hurt him. Zarky not evil. He wants friends.”

Sami walked over to Frankie. “Say sorry, swishy fishy.”

Frankie looked just like I felt when Mom made me apologize to Sara Wartly for splat-bombing her. He looked up at the eel and the green in his eyes faded to a dull glow.

“Now Zarky say sorry to Frankie,” Sami said to the eel.

The eel lowered his head and looked at Frankie. His orange eyes dimmed too.

Sami's eyes stopped glowing orange and green, and she giggled.

“I know you're not mean, swishy fishy,” she said, picking up Frankie and planting a huge wet kiss on his face. I've never seen a fish look so embarrassed. It was one thing to say sorry, but totally another to get kissed in front of your one-time arch-nemesis.

Pradeep unfolded a sick bag from his pocket, filled it with water from the drain, and held it out for Frankie. He wriggled across and jumped inside.

“This is pathetic,” Mark said as he stomped past the eel. “You're not an evil zombie eel at all. You can't even thrash a puny little zombie fish. Next time I'm gonna make a zombie so tough…” Mark didn't have a chance to finish his insult. The not-so-evil eel filled its mouth with green gunk from the kiddie pool and squirted it in Mark's face.

“Argh!” Mark yelled. “Stupid eel, stupid fish, stupid vacation!”

“Eel go splat!” Sami said, and giggled. “Now get Zarky home.”

Pradeep opened the door to the balcony, and that's when we saw the little rowboat far out in the bay. You could hardly make it out through all the fog and the rain. It looked like a tiny toy boat floating away across a giant pond. Because that's exactly what it was doing. It was heading out to sea.