Read My Teacher Ate My Brain Online
Authors: Tommy Donbavand
My Teacher Ate My Brain
Also by Tommy Donbavand
Scream Street
Zombie!
Wolf
The Uniform
Virus
This ebook edition published in 2012
Franklin Watts
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
Franklin Watts Australia
Level 17/207 Kent Street
Sydney, NSW 2000
The author has asserted their rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Nicholas Kinney/Shutterstock: front cover c.
Anastasiya Zalevska/Shutterstock: front cover tl, bl, tr, br.
ISBN: 978 1 4451 1470 5
Franklin Watts is a division of Hachette Children’s Books,
an Hachette UK company.
www.hachette.co.uk
For Guy N. Smith,
author of
Night of the Crabs
,
the horror story that started it all…
I ran as fast as I could, my bare feet sinking in the soft sand, making it difficult to pick up speed. Behind me, I could hear the wet-throated scream of Miss Edwards, my maths teacher — or, at least, what was left of her. A glance over my shoulder confirmed what I feared — she was gaining on me. Her jaw, broken in the fight, hung loose and swung from side to side with each of her uncertain strides. If it wasn’t for the blood cascading down the exposed white bone of her chin, it would have looked as though she was yawning.
Miss Edwards had always been good looking — the type of teacher fancied by older students and male staff alike. Her long, blonde hair always had that “just been washed” look to it, and she smelled like a spring day — all honey and strawberries. Boys actually fought to sit at the front in her maths classes — and my best mate, Callum, never let me forget the day I absent-mindedly doodled her name in my exercise book. He said I had a crush on her — but that was just stupid.
Miss Edwards didn’t smell of strawberries any more. She smelled of rotten meat. Of terror. Of death.
Her hair was matted with blood and lumps of grey that I knew had to be one of my classmate’s brains. I had to get away.
Suddenly, my foot caught in a hole and a lightning bolt of pain shot up from my ankle as it twisted violently to one side. I fell, face first, into the sand, and for a second I almost gave up. I almost lay there and let Miss Edwards finish me off. But then I realised I was clutching something in my hand and I lifted my head to see what it was. I was still holding the spatula Mr Blake had handed me ready to cook sausages on the barbecue. I watched in fascination as the moonlight glinted on its shining, metal surface.
GLARK!
I flipped myself over onto my back at the sound — just in time to see Miss Edwards’s twisted face plunge down, teeth aimed squarely for my throat. I lashed out with the spatula as hard as I could, and caught her in the side of the face. The blow was enough to knock her to one side — but also enough to snap the head from the spatula. Now all I had was a jagged metal stick in my hand. And that was probably what saved me.
Miss Edwards loomed back over me, a mixture of her blood and saliva spattering down on my cheeks like warm, sticky rain. Her eyes — milky and unfocussed — gazed down at me hungrily. And then I knew what I had to do. Placing the heel of my hand against the bottom of the spatula’s handle, I pushed the sharp end as hard as I could into one of her eyes. Her eyeball popped — I actually heard it — and then all resistance was gone.
The metal spear sank deep into Miss Edwards’s brain and, with a final groan, her lifeless body slumped down on top of me. I turned my head to one side — partly to catch my breath and partly so that I didn’t have to look at what I’d just done.
Then…
FLASH!
My vision flooded with white light and it was a few seconds before I could see clearly again. Slowly, everything came back into focus and I saw Callum kneeling in the sand beside me — his phone in his hand. He’d taken a photo of me and the corpse of Miss Edwards!
“Whoooo-ooo!” he said, grinning like an idiot. “Josh finally gets the chance to cuddle his favourite teacher!”
By the time I pushed Miss Edwards’s corpse off me, Callum was gone — racing along the beach, shouting that he was going to “find someone else who was dressed up as a zombie”. Could he really think this was all make-believe? He’d seen the way I’d had to finish off Miss Edwards, and he still didn’t understand this nightmare was real! Mind you — I was having a hard time believing it myself.
Things like this weren’t supposed to happen in real life — and especially not on school camping trips. This morning, I was just one of five kids from Liverpool who stayed after school a couple of times a week to help out with the homework club — but now I was fighting the undead on a tiny island off the coast of Wales. This weekend away was the teachers’ way of saying thanks for all our hard work — and Mr Blake had even arranged for us to stay here on Shell Island before it officially opened to visitors. He’d showed us on the map that it wasn’t really an island, but when the tide came in and flooded the road, the camp site was cut off from the mainland until —
“ARGH!”
The sound jerked me back to my senses, and I quickly remembered that I was out in the open. Miss Edwards might be finally dead, but Mr Blake was still out here somewhere, hungrily searching for human flesh. I stood, taking care not to put too much weight on my twisted ankle. It hurt, but not enough to keep me from searching for somewhere to hide.
I hurried up the beach and over the sand dunes to the main camping ground. I knew our flimsy tents wouldn’t provide any protection, but I was sure I’d spotted a small concrete shed. The moon was ducking in and out from behind a gathering bank of clouds and it was difficult to see but — yes! There it was!
I half-ran, half-stumbled across the camp site to the shed. I fell against the rough stone wall and took a moment to catch my breath. Then I began to circle the building, looking for the door. In the distance, I could just make out the orange glow of the fire we’d started on the beach to cook dinner. Mr Blake had dug a pit and filled it with wood and clumps of dried grass, and he was just setting it alight when that thing — whatever it was — had risen up out of the sand and bitten him.
My fingers moved from concrete to wood. I’d found the door! If I was right, this would be the place where the site’s groundskeeper kept all his tools — tools which could be used as weapons against anything or anyone that wanted to eat me. Thankfully, the door was unlocked and I quietly slipped inside the shed… where a hand grabbed me by the throat and shoved me hard against the wall.
“Listen to me, you brain-sucking scum! There’s no way I’m going to let you eat the contents of my head or anyone else’s, get it?!”
I caught a glint of metal in the thin shaft of moonlight that crept in through the single, filthy window. I knew the owner of that voice — and she was holding a pair of gardening shears!
“Lydia!” I cried. “It’s me — Josh!”
There was a CLICK, and the powerful beam of a torch was aimed at my face.
“I know who it is,” snarled Lydia. “I just don’t know if you’re safe to be around.”
“I… I am!” I stammered as her grip tightened around my throat. “I haven’t been bitten!”
Lydia’s eyes glinted angrily in the torchlight as she brought the shears closer to my face.
“Prove it!”
I blinked in the torchlight. “You want me to prove I’m not a zombie?”
“Exactly!”
“Well, I know we’re both in serious danger, and I haven’t tried to rip your face off yet — how’s that for proof?”
With a sigh, Lydia relaxed her grip and slumped to the floor. “Sorry,” she said. “I just had to be sure.”
