Zombie Bums from Uranus (15 page)

The Forker jabbed a fork into the zombie bum boulder and began pushing it towards the sauna,
causing the bums to emit a particularly foul and putrid gas. In fact, it was so horrible that even Zack's bum started coughing and gagging.

‘That's absolutely disgusting,' it rasped between coughs. ‘They should be ashamed of themselves!'

Zack pinched his nose.

With each of the Forker's jabs, Zack was reminded yet again that, despite the profession's glamorous image, bum-fighting was a dirty, unpleasant business. He was tempted to turn around and go home . . . until he remembered that he didn't actually have a home to go to. Or a town for that matter. Or even a family.

‘Open the door!' shouted the Forker.

The Flicker pulled the heavy wooden door open and was immediately engulfed by a cloud of steam.

‘YAH!' yelled the Forker as he forked the bums through the door with one last mighty thrust.

‘Language!' said Gran.

The Forker turned around, steam pouring out behind him as he triumphantly raised his fork to the sky.

Zack felt a lot safer than he had for a long time.

But as he watched the Forker forking the air, Zack noticed something moving inside the sauna.

The zombie bums!

They'd broken free of their knots!

And they were heading for the door.

Zack leapt forward and, knocking the Forker flying, slammed his shoulder against the door.

‘Good work, Zack,' said the Forker, picking himself up off the ground. ‘I was just about to do that.'

Zack peered inside the little square window at the top of the door. The zombie bums were going absolutely nuts. Far from slowing them down and melting them, the heat seemed to be speeding them up.

Zack gulped.

Normal zombie bums were bad enough, but supercharged zombie bums . . . well . . . he shuddered at the thought.

Zack could feel them slamming against the door.

‘They're going crazy,' he said. ‘It's not working!'

‘Turn up the heat!' said Eleanor.

‘It's already up pretty high,' said the Flicker.

‘Turn it up higher!' said Gran.

The Flicker nodded and adjusted the dial on the temperature unit.

Zack trembled as he watched the bums bounce around the sauna faster and faster until they were just blue-black streaks barely visible through the steam.

The sound of them hitting the walls was deafening. The sauna door was beginning to splinter.

‘Higher!' commanded Gran.

‘I've got it up higher than it's ever been,' said the Flicker, sweating. ‘It's higher than any human could possibly stand!'

‘I hardly have to remind you that those things aren't human,' said Gran. ‘Step aside!'

‘No, Pincher,' said the Flicker. ‘If they spontaneously combust, you'll blow us all to Uranus!'

‘Language!' said Gran.

‘I meant the planet!' said the Flicker.

But Gran wasn't listening. She pushed past him,
grabbed the temperature control with her pincer-fingers and spun it like a top.

‘No!' said the Flicker, backing away from the sauna, holding his towel out in front of him like a shield.

‘Yes!' said Gran, a strange light shining in her eyes.

Zack was scared. When it came to bum-fighting, Gran didn't seem to have any fear. She was prepared to go all the way. And then even further.

Both Zack and Eleanor took a step backwards.

‘Stand your ground, soldiers!' barked Gran. ‘Tell me what you see!'

Zack was paralysed.

He was too scared to stay there, but too scared to disobey.

He stayed.

Zombie bums were scary, but right at that moment, his gran was even scarier.

He stepped forward, peered through the window and was stunned to see the bums lying on the floor in a puddle of blue-black liquid.

‘Well?' said Gran.

‘They've stopped moving,' said Zack. ‘They're just lying there. It looks like . . . like . . . they're melting.'

‘Good,' said Gran. ‘That's good.'

The Flicker halted his retreat and peeked out from behind his towel.

‘Yes, I thought so,' he said. ‘Just as I planned!'

But nobody was taking much notice of the Flicker.

They were all crowded around the window of the sauna watching the zombie bums melt. All of them, that is, except Eleanor. She was looking worried.

‘What's the matter, Eleanor?' said Zack.

‘I don't know if this is any solution,' said Eleanor. ‘We can't just leave the puddle there. The sauna is going to run out of power sooner or later, and when the puddle cools down there's no guarantee that it won't reform into one gigantic zombie bum, and then we'll really be in trouble.'

Zack began backing away again.

‘Don't worry about it,' said the Forker. ‘All we have to do is mop up the mess with one of the Flicker's towels and then we'll take it to the incinerator and burn it.'

‘No worries!' said the Flicker.

Zack and Eleanor watched as the Flicker grabbed the towel around his waist and began to pull it off.

‘Urggh!' they said, covering their eyes.

‘Don't worry,' said the Flicker. ‘There are plenty more where this came from!'

Zack peered out from behind his fingers at the Flicker and saw—to his great relief—that the Flicker was wearing another towel underneath the one he had just peeled off. The Flicker bunched up his towel and put it onto the end of the Forker's fork.

‘Pincher,' said the Forker, ‘fire up the incinerator. It's behind the greenhouse. We're going to have a good old-fashioned burn-off.'

‘Right you are,' said Gran and she ran off across the croquet lawn towards the greenhouse.

‘All right,' said the Forker, his hand on the door handle. ‘Nose-pegs everyone! I'm opening the door!'

Zack barely had time to pull a peg from his belt
and snap it onto his nose before he felt a blast of stinking heat.

Through the haze he saw the Forker entering the sauna and pushing the towel on the end of his fork into the puddle.

‘There's too much!' said the Forker, dumping the first towel on the ground behind him. ‘I need another towel!'

The Flicker peeled a second towel from around his waist and passed it to the Forker.

It wasn't long before the Forker asked for a third towel.

And then a fourth.

‘I can't believe you have so many towels wrapped around your waist!' said Zack, amazed.

The Flicker smiled. ‘A good bum-flicker is always prepared!'

Finally the mess was all soaked up.

The Forker emerged from the sauna, dug his fork into the pile of towels on the ground and, holding it out in front of him, marched to the incinerator.

Zack, Eleanor and the Flicker followed him.

When they arrived at the incinerator Gran had a huge blaze going. The flames were leaping high into the air.

The Forker dumped the soggy blue-black mass into the incinerator.

WUMMMMPPPHHH!

The pile of towels exploded into flame and produced clouds of black smoke. It was the most toxic, foul-smelling smoke Zack had ever had the misfortune to encounter.

The stench was worse than the stenches of the midnight bum rally, the Great Windy Desert, the Brown Forest and Stenchgantor combined.

Zack put his hands to his throat, gasping and choking.

Through his stinging, watering eyes he saw the others had their hands up to their throats as well.

It was the last thing Zack saw before his vision failed and he fell to the ground.

Z
ack coughed.

His throat was burning.

His lungs were burning.

He opened his eyes.

It was dark.

He tried to sit up, but his wrists and ankles were tied together and it was difficult to move.

Zack didn't know where he was or how long he'd been lying there.

It could have been a few minutes.

It could have been a few days.

He had no idea.

The last thing he could remember was being choked by the black smoke created by the burning zombie bums, but after that, nothing.

On the wall beside him Zack could see a ladder leading up to a rectangle of light high above. It didn't provide much illumination, but it was enough. As his
eyes adjusted to the darkness, Zack was able to make out that he was in an enormous cavernous space filled by a forest of towering concrete pillars. The roots of trees grew through the walls, cracking the concrete and winding across the floor into the pitch-blackness beyond.

Zack shivered.

It reminded him of the drain that he'd been blown into by the cluster bum after the midnight bum rally. The drain where he'd been captured and interrogated by bums . . .

As far as Zack could make out, however, he was alone.

And he was frightened.

‘Ahh,' said a voice. ‘Awake at last!'

Zack froze.

The voice sent fresh shivers through his body.

Zack peered into the darkness and saw the out-lines of two bums coming towards him. One of them was wearing a small paper crown.

There was no mistaking who it was.

The Prince! Leader of Bum Intelligence. And standing next to him was none other than his faithful servant Maurice.

‘You!' said Zack, surprised to say the least. The last time he'd seen the Prince he was being carried off by a wedge-tailed bum-eater. And Maurice had fallen off the side of the bumcano. Neither of them could possibly have survived.

‘Yes, it's us!' said the Prince. ‘Unless I'm very much mistaken, eh, Maurice?'

‘Yes,' guffawed Maurice at the Prince's little
joke. ‘Unless you're very, very much mistaken!'

Zack tried to pinch his nose to protect himself from the fumes of Maurice's amusement, but remembered he couldn't move his hands. He looked down and saw they were bound with toilet paper.

‘What do you think you're doing?' said Zack, struggling to untie his hands. ‘And what have you done with the others?'

‘Relax,' said the Prince. ‘Your friends will be here any moment. They're coming to help save you, just as we knew they would.'

As if on cue, they heard Eleanor's voice far above them.

‘Zack!' she called. ‘Zack?'

‘Ah . . .' said the Prince. ‘There they are now . . . right on schedule. That's the one thing I like about bum-fighters. They're very predictable, aren't they Maurice?'

‘Yes, Prince,' said Maurice. ‘Very, very predictable.'

‘Zack, are you down there?' called Eleanor.

‘Call to her,' said the Prince. ‘And no funny business.'

‘If you think you can bumnap me and use me as bait to catch the others you're sadly mistaken,' said Zack.

‘Just call her,' said the Prince. ‘Or else.'

‘Or else what?' said Zack.

‘Or else your bum gets it,' said the Prince. He nodded to Maurice.

Maurice yanked hard on a long piece of toilet paper trailing behind him and Zack's bum, attached
to the other end, came flying out of the darkness and hit the ground next to Zack.

Zack could see his bum was in a bad way. It had obviously been crying and it had a nasty red rash across both cheeks.

‘Help me, Zack,' it pleaded. ‘Please . . . they've got home-brand toilet paper . . . and they're not afraid to use it!'

‘That's enough from you!' said the Prince, shoving a wad of rough-looking toilet paper into Zack's bum to shut it up.

Zack shook his head. Home-brand toilet paper . . . He knew from experience the Prince and Maurice were ruthless, but he'd never suspected they would stoop this low.

‘Zack!' called Gran. ‘Where are you?'

‘Call them,' said the Prince.

Zack looked at his trembling bum.

He had no choice.

‘I'm here,' he called.

‘We'll be right down!' yelled Eleanor.

‘Good boy,' said the Prince, as he and Maurice stepped back into the darkness, yanking Zack's bum with them.

‘Very, very good boy,' said Maurice.