The Big Nap (3 page)

Or maybe he was a real zombie.

I watched the slow-moving salamander approach the library. He reached the door at the same time as a guinea pig in a yellow sweater.

Eena?
She looked like a shorter clone of her sister, but she moved like Bo, in a stiff-legged trance.

They bowed to each other, he held the door for her, and they went inside.

It seemed Emerson Hicky was having an epidemic of good manners.

Stranger and stranger.

I spotted the new kid, Sammy, just down the hall, chatting with Fred-o the bully. Sammy passed a bag to the big muskrat, who chuckled and sauntered off.

When Sammy noticed me, he waved me over. I strolled up to him.

"Heya, pal," he said in a voice smooth as creamy peanut butter. "Sammy's the name, weaseling's the game."

"I'm—" I started to say.

He held up a paw. "Hey, I know who you are, Chet Gecko. You're a big lizard on campus—the man with the plan."

It was flattery, I admit. But when a guy's right, he's right.

I checked out Sammy. He lounged against a pole, cooler than a root beer Popsicle. His brown fur was glossy, and he had that knowing look in his eyes, like the fifth graders who practice kissing behind the bungalows.

"You new here?" I asked.

"Just fell off the turnip truck," he said. "We move around a lot, so I'm always the new kid." Sammy
chuckled. "It's about as much fun as a long ride on a busted roller coaster, but I'm used to it."

I liked his plucky attitude and the way he talked.

"Made many friends yet?" I asked.

Sammy shrugged. "A few. I'm still sorting out the cool kids from the jerks."

"Yeah? Better do some more sorting. That Fred-o is bad news on webbed feet."

Sammy waved off my comment. "Don't worry, I can handle that goombah."

"Okay," I said, "it's your lunch money."

The weasel snapped his fingers. "Say, listen: My mom's a good cook. You wanna come over for dinner some night?"

Dinner?
One of my favorite words.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "That'd be fine."

He flashed a smile. "Cool," he said. "Well, plant you now..."

"...And dig you later," I finished.

Sammy flowed off down the hall like a length of brown silk tied to a king snake's tail.

I saw a familiar figure across the library lawn. Natalie flapped up as I crossed to meet her.

"Where you been?" she said.

"Having a chat with the new kid, Sammy."

She watched him glide around the corner. "I don't like him. He seems sneaky."

"Naw," I said. "He's all right. I'm gonna go over and have dinner at his house sometime."

"Uh-huh." She raised an eyebrow. "Now, can we park the welcome wagon and get back to our case?"

"You bet."

As we headed for the swings, I filled her in on Bo's odd behavior.

"
Two
zombies?" she said.

"Yup. They may be connected, but let's concentrate on the one we're getting paid for."

"Okeydokey. We'll take things one zombie at a time."

We sat on the swings. We swung. A horsefly circled above us, and I zapped him with my tongue—
thwick!
Fuel food for detective work.

But before we could do any serious thinking, the bell rang. Rats. It's hard to make progress on a case when bells keep ringing like Santa's sleigh in a cyclone.

I hopped off the swing. We trudged back to class.

"Let's try to get close to Eena; see what we can pick up," I said.

"Whatever it is, I hope it's not catching."

"Ha, ha. Meet me outside her room after school."

"It's a deal, McNeal," she said. Natalie hurried to her class.

I stopped by the candy machine and spent most of Meena's retainer fee on a Pillbug Crunch bar. For my own reasons, I hoped the case would take a couple of days to solve.

There's nothing more selfish than a PI with a sweet tooth.

Soon as the last bell chimed, I slid out the door like a wombat on ice. We had to catch up with Eena before she got too far.

I needn't have worried.

As Natalie and I met by Room 3, I sneaked a peek inside, past the steady stream of departing kids. Eena was cleaning blackboards for Ms. Glick.

Such a polite zombie. Maybe she could tackle my messy bedroom next.

Natalie and I slipped out of sight, just around the corner. Ms. Glick had kid radar, and it wouldn't pay to get caught in her sights.

We leaned against the wall, and Natalie whistled a little tune.

"What's that you're singing?" I asked.

"'The Mock-arena.'"

"Yeah? Well you'll be singing 'Bye Bye Birdie' if you don't knock it off. We're supposed to be spying."

Natalie put a wing feather to my mouth. "
Shhh.
Here she comes."

We faded back behind some scraggly bushes and watched as Eena shuffled by. But we didn't need to hide. She wouldn't have noticed anything short of a flying saucer crash-landing on her foot, spitting out a string of aliens singing, "Scoobie-doobie-doo."

Still, it never hurts to be sly. Natalie and I slipped out of the bushes and idled down the hall behind the yellow-sweatered guinea pig.

Eena didn't look left or right. She marched, slow as the last minute of the last day of school. Up the hall, then right. Down another hall, then into ... the library.

"Odd," I said to Natalie. "She went there at recess, too."

"Maybe she's got to study for her Monster Ed classes."

"Or maybe," I said, "something's going on in that library—something even scarier than required reading."

Natalie shrugged. "Dunno. But we need to go in there, anyway."

"Why's that?"

"Neither of us knows anything about zombies. What better place to find out than the library?"

She had a point. (Other than the one at the end of her beak, I mean.) After giving it a minute, we pushed through the library doors and into the cool quiet.

I scanned the book stacks. No Eena.

We poked into the computer room. Two bratty prairie dogs played video games free from the librarian's gaze, but still no Eena.

Hmm.

"She'll turn up," said Natalie. "Meantime, let's research."

She plunked her tail feathers into a seat and booted up an open computer. Within minutes, Natalie had collected a host of zombie Web sites:
The Undead & You, Harry's Happy Zombie Page, Hypnosis and Zombiism, Flesh-Eaters' Funtime,
www.evilzombie.com
—and scads of others.

For some reason, I felt restless. "You check 'em out," I said. "I'll take another look around."

I reentered the main room, pacing up and down the deserted stacks. Where was the librarian?

Back behind his desk, I slipped into a short corridor lined with three doors. (Yeah, I know it's off-limits. So sue me; I'm a snoopy detective.)

One door led to the bathroom. Empty.

One door led to the storage room. Locked.

A faint murmur drifted through the third door, like a radio station beaming from Mars. I leaned closer. Some kind of meeting...?

I didn't hear him approach, but my nostrils flared at the smell. Eau de Roadkill, with just a hint of incense.

Now, who at Emerson Hicky was tough enough to wear that scent? I had to find out.

"Hidey-ho," rumbled a deep voice. "I'm the new librarian."

I turned. "Thanks, pal. You just saved me a lot of detective work."

My eyes met a fuzzy belly button. I craned my neck and looked up, up, up.

His hairy chest was no broader than the back end of a Mack truck, and he wasn't quite as tall as a redwood tree, but you could still tell: This was one big possum. Sleepy eyes lurked behind wraparound shades, and a blue beret crowned the whole affair.

Pretty snappy for a marsupial.

"Don't b'leeve I've had the pleasure," he said. "My handle is Aloyicious Theonlyest Bunk—but you can call me Cool Beans. May I ... help you with somethin'?"

Caught red-handed while snooping, I improvised. "Um ... yeah. I was just looking for some books on zombies. Nobody was around, so I..."

The big possum grinned, exposing two rows of sharp teeth. "Copacetic, daddy-o. Right this way."

He plopped a python-sized arm across my shoulders and steered me back to the book stacks. "You're in luck, little lizard. You're shootin' the breeze with the local expert on zombies, duppies, ghouls, spirits, and mocha lattes."

Cool Beans leaned down and plucked a book from the shelf. "And it's a swingin' thing you met me," he continued, "'cause this is the only book on zombies we got."

I glanced at the cover.
The Little Zombie That Could.
Not exactly the finest in ghoulish reference materials.

"So, Mr....uh, Beans," I said.

"Cool Beans," said the possum. "
Mister
is for squares and squirrels."

I nodded. "Cool Beans. I need to know how to tell if someone's gone zomboid. I mean, what are the signs?"

The burly possum narrowed his eyes. "Why you askin'?"

"Uh, it's for my class project," I said.

"Hmm," he said. "Well, your basic zombie stares straight ahead ... walks all stiff-legged ... talks zombie talk..."

"Zombie talk?"

"Yeah, you know, like: 'Books good; modern art bad.' Stuff like that. Also, zombies follow orders like I follow the smell of fine espresso. You dig?"

I leaned against a chair back. "And how do you make a zombie?" I asked.

"Well, you—" Cool Beans glanced at the wall clock. "Oh, man, check out the time. I gotta split."

He headed for the hall behind his desk at a steady amble, which for a possum is like sprinting a fifty-yard dash. "Later, freighter," he said. "It's been uptown, way-out, and wild."

Cool Beans disappeared into the short corridor. A door opened and closed.

Curiouser and curiouser.

From what the big possum had said, both Bo Newt and Eena Moe had all the signs of advanced zombitude. I didn't know how they'd gotten that way. But I knew one thing.

For a simple librarian, this guy knew an awful lot about zombies—the kind of stuff you can't learn from books. Just ghost to show you: There's no ghoul like an old ghoul.

The library didn't feel so safe anymore. I dragged Natalie off the computer, and we headed for my place to regroup. My sharp detective mind needed some more fuel food.

Along the way, I filled Natalie in on my encounter with the new librarian and the mysterious sounds behind the closed door. We tried to guess what was happening in the library meeting room.

"Do you think Cool Beans is making zombies back there?" I asked.

"And they're what, shelving his books for him?" she said. "I dunno."

"Whatever it is, he wants to keep it under wraps."

We strolled down the sidewalk under heavy skies.
The clouds looked as gray as a rhino's rump at twilight and as full of rain as an overstuffed water balloon.

Natalie ran down her research results. "Man, there's a lot of info out there," she said. "Do you know, I even learned how to make a zombie float?"

"How do you make a zombie float?" I asked.

"A glass of root beer and two scoops of zombie!" Natalie squawked. "You sure stepped into that one."

I took a deep breath. A private eye stays calm, even in the face of extreme aggravation. "Did you pick up anything other than the latest zombie jokes?"

Natalie hopped off the curb and we crossed the street toward my house. "Absolutely. I learned that most zombies have had their souls sucked out of their bodies."

"
Eeew,
" we said together. "Soul suckers."

"They can either be dead folks brought back to life, or living ones who get turned into slaves," Natalie said.

"And how do you enslave someone?" She raised an eyebrow. "I was just reading that part when somebody dragged me off the computer."

I examined my fingerpads closely. "Is that so?"

"But," she said, "hypnosis is one way—that much I know."

We strolled into my backyard. By this time, my
little sister, Pinky, should've been all over me like brown on a chocolate bar. I looked around. No sign of her.