The Flinkwater Factor (14 page)

36

Zo
mbie

For a few seconds there was silence, then came a scraping, foot-dragging sound.

“I think it's coming from over there,” Billy whispered, pointing at the lab bench at the far end of the room.

My mouth was too dry to speak.

Billy said, “Maybe we should get out of here.”

That sounded like a good idea to me. Except I couldn't move. It was like one of those dreams where you're paralyzed—except I wasn't asleep. I just couldn't make my legs move. Billy seemed to be having the same problem.

We heard more scraping, another groaning gasp, and a creature rose up from behind the bench. It staggered to its feet and stood swaying, waving its arms and howling.

“Hwaargh! Ghurk!”

I knew what it was right away by its staggering gait and the horrible sounds. But most of all I knew it from the red, oozing wounds covering its ruin of a face.

“Zombie!” I screamed.

Billy was screaming too, and suddenly we were both running for the door.

The zombie came after us, grunting and groaning, its limbs flailing spastically. Billy and I grabbed the door handle at the same moment—but the door wouldn't budge. It took a second for me to realize that I was pulling while Billy was pushing, but when I switched to pushing he started pulling. Behind us, the zombie let out a horrific shriek. I looked back just as it fell face-first to the floor, writhing and wriggling and moaning piteously.

Billy let go of the door handle. I pushed the door open.

“Come
on
!” I yelled.

“No, wait! Look at what it's wearing.”

I looked.

Then I looked again.

“Are those
SpongeBob
pajamas?” I asked.

Billy stepped toward him.

“Don't let him bite you!” I said.

Billy said, “Professor Little?”

“Hrawnnnnn!”
said the zombie version of Professor Little.

“It's okay!” Billy said, moving toward him. “It's just nanobots.”

“Nanobots turn people into zombies?”

“No! Come here, help me.”

The zombie professor was having some sort of seizure. Billy—my hero—stuck his hand in the professor's mouth and pulled out a gob of the most disgusting red goo imaginable. The pro­fessor coughed and sprayed red glop all over Billy's face. Billy wiped it away like it was nothing. The professor gasped and spat and coughed and spat some more, sending my yuck-meter dials spinning out of control.

“Professor! Are you okay?” Billy shouted.

The professor sat up and shook his head violently. Bits of red came flying off him, including one largish blob that had been attached to the tip of his nose.

The only reason I didn't run off screaming right then was because Billy—my hero—seemed so calm.

“Thank you, my boy,” said Professor Little in a hoarse voice. More of the red glop was falling from his face and hands. “I don't suppose you could get me a towel?”

Billy ran over to the towel dispenser and came back with a wad of paper towels. The professor
began to wipe his face clean, and I noticed a remarkable thing.

The grape-size mole on his nose was gone. And so were all his other lumps, blobs, and blotches.

“Well?” he said. “How do I look?”

37

Aff
ianced

We took a moment to marvel at the new, mole-free Professor Little. Billy said, “You look great, Professor. Just a little shiny is all.”

He
did
look shiny. As if somebody had stretched his skin tight over his head and then buffed it to a waxy sheen. Except for the peculiar texture, he was not a bad-looking man. If he'd had any hair on the top of his head he might have been quite handsome.

The professor tried to smile. His skin stretched.

“It feels a little tight,” he said. “But I suppose that's only to be expected. The treatment removes the nevi, but it doesn't make new skin. In time, the epidermis will grow and relax.” The professor climbed to his feet. More reddish clumps of nanoglop dropped to the floor. I stepped back to avoid them.

“Don't worry,” he said. “The bots have gone dormant.”

“What happened?” Billy asked.

“A slight miscalculation is all.” The professor brushed the last of the glop from his pajamas. “I underestimated the number of melanocytic nevi present, and the nanos  . . . well, I guess they got a little overexcited.” He walked over to a small mirror hanging on the wall and examined his reflection. “But it worked!”

“But Professor, why would you test it out on yourself?” I asked.

“To get rid of my nevi, of course!” he said, admiring his shiny, tight new features.

“Yeah, but wouldn't it have made more sense to first try it out on, I don't know, a moley mouse or something?”

The professor stiffened. “I would
never
experiment on a helpless animal! That was why I resigned my position at ACPOD. They wanted me to inject experimental nanotech into a monkey. I refused, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, thinking of Dipwad.

“Also, I was in a bit of a hurry,” the professor said. “I'm getting married, you see.”

“Married?”

“Yes. My fiancée will be flying in from Schenectady this very afternoon.”

“And—what? You wanted to surprise her?”

“That is precisely what I
didn't
want to do. You see, Hillary and I have never met. Face to face, that is.”

“You're marrying somebody you don't know?”

“Oh, we've had an online relationship for several months.”

“But you've never
seen
each other?”

“Of course we've seen each other. We make video calls all the time. She's a lovely woman. Gorgeous, in fact. Only—perhaps it was dishonest of me—I used a little visual enhancement program on my own image. I, um, I may have edited out certain aspects of my facial features.”

38

TSA

A
n hour later the three of us were standing in the waiting area at the Flinkwater County Airport. The professor had on a slightly threadbare but clean herringbone sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. I'd helped him pick it out from the pathetic selection hanging in his closet. He looked quite handsome—in a shiny, balding, twitchy, absentminded professor sort of way.

Billy was more interested in airport technology than in the human drama about to unfold. He was watching people make their way through the security gate.

“I bet I could make a bomb that those security scanners could never detect,” he said.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“I wouldn't. I'm just saying I
could
. If I wanted to.”

The people coming from the gate area were the usual assortment of Flinkwater visitors—­several engineer-types and a few sales-types. I knew which one was Hillary the moment she appeared: perfect hair, bright red lipstick, dressed to kill, and visibly nervous. She stepped tentatively into the waiting area, her eyes quickly scanning the people there, skittering past us, doing a double take, then fixing upon the professor. She smiled uncertainly, then came toward us. As she got closer, I noticed something else about her.

An enormous purple mole bulged from the point of her chin. It could have competed with the professor's now-missing nose bauble.

I looked at the professor. He was staring wide-eyed at his approaching fiancée. I held my breath. The professor held out his arms and moved toward her. They embraced, then looked happily into each other's eyes.

“Hilly-poo,” said Professor Little.

“Lankydoodle,” said Hilly-poo.

I looked at Billy and mouthed,
Lankydoodle?
He rolled his eyes.

Hilly-poo's eyes were wet. She blinked, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I am so sorry!” she exclaimed, pushing herself away.

“Sorry for what?” the professor asked, bewildered.

She raised a hand and touched the mole hanging from her chin. “I didn't want you to see this. I've been editing it out of our video calls. I'd planned to have it removed, but the doctor said it was too big. He said it would require major surgery. But I will! I will have it removed, my love!”

The professor was staring at her mole with a delighted expression on his shiny face.

“Dear one,” he said, “I love your little melanocytic nevus. But if you don't want it, perhaps you will allow me to show you a little something I've been working on in my laboratory.”

“Oh Lankydoodle!”

“Hilly-poo!”

And then they kissed.

I must confess to having mixed feelings at that moment. On the one hand, this was some serious romance—the lonely, previously mole-ridden professor and the lonely, presently mole-ridden lady from Schenectady find each other and kiss for the first time. I suspected it was the first time
ever
for the professor. I mean, I was tearing up a little.

On the other hand, it reminded me of my own never-been-kissed situation. I turned toward
Billy, wondering if I had the courage to plant a big smooch on him right then and there, but Billy was over by the security gate, talking to one of the TSA agents. Then there were two agents talking to him. Suddenly two more TSA agents rushed over, took Billy by his arms, and marched him toward a door marked
SECURITY ONLY
.

“Hey!” I yelled, running toward them.

Another agent—a woman the size of a gorilla—grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the floor.

“Billy!” I shouted. He looked back at me, his eyes wide, as they shunted him into the security room. The door closed.

“Where are they taking him?” I asked Ms. Gorilla.

She set me down. “That your boyfriend?” she inquired.

“My fiancé, actually,” I said.

“Is that a fact?” She seemed amused.

“You can't just go around grabbing people,” I said.

“Actually, we can. Especially when they start talking about bombs in airports.”

“Billy is
not
a bomber!”

“That may be, but he just boasted that he knew how to get a bomb through security.”

“That doesn't make him a bomber!”

“We'll see about that. After we talk to him for a while.”

“How long is ‘a while'?”

“I wouldn't wait, if I were you.”

Defeated, I turned back to the professor and his fiancée—but they were gone. The absentminded Professor Little had forgotten all about me and Billy. No doubt he was on his way to the nanolab to help Hilly-poo get rid of her moley-poo.

Thirteen going on fourteen, I was stuck at the airport with no one to kiss.