Zombiefied! (4 page)

The opening was about the size and shape of a door, and as black as the mouth of a cave. A slight wind blew up out of it. The air smelt old and stale.

For a few seconds I stood still, staring into the pitch-black hole. Where had it suddenly appeared from? I'm pretty sure my mouth was gaping too, because it's not very often that a portal into the unknown opens up before your eyes. I decided I should get a closer look. Maybe I'd found a secret zombie crypt after all!

I put my bag down and began to pick
my way carefully between a box of rags and a big, old machine that I guessed was used to polish the floor.

Suddenly, there was a sound behind me. I must've been kind of jumpy 'cause I spun around real quick. My leg hit the floor-polisher and, as I fell, I tried to grab the wooden shelf.

‘WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?' boomed a voice.

I looked up from where I was sprawled on the floor. Standing in the hallway was Mr Slender.

Mr Slender, the Maths teacher, was tall and thin and sharp. Unlike old Crumpet, whenever Mr Slender opened his mouth it was to give an order or to tell
someone off. Sometimes, if he was really angry, he threw bits of chalk at people. Everyone was petrified of him.

‘Ummm,' I said, wondering why, out of all the teachers in school, it had to be Slender who caught me. I must've been in shock because I added, ‘That just opened.' I pointed behind me at the back wall of the cupboard.

‘What just opened?' said Mr Slender, glaring at me.

I glanced around. The hole was gone. There was just a solid wall.

‘It was just there,' I said, still pointing. What had happened? Where had it gone?

‘Hmmm,' said Mr Slender. ‘Your knee's bleeding. Did you fall off your bike?'

I was so stunned, I could barely register what he was saying. ‘There was a hole in the wall. Sort of like a doorway.'

‘I'm sure there was,' said Mr Slender in a tone that made it clear he didn't believe me. ‘Now did you fall off your bike or not?'

‘Yeah, but I'm OK.' I stared back where the hole had been. ‘It's just that this hole . . . it wasn't there, and then it appeared.'

‘You sound confused.' Mr Slender peered at me. ‘Did you hit your head in the fall?'

‘Yeah — I mean no.' I suddenly
felt
confused.

‘There is no hole. Look.' He gestured toward the wall. ‘And as for things that appear out of nowhere, well, I've never heard anything stupider in my life. Now I think you'd better go wash your knee, then head straight to class. And I want to see you in my classroom after school so you can catch up on all the work you've already missed.'

Detention! That was so unfair! People always arrived late to the first class of the day, so it's not like I would have missed anything important!

‘Off you go,' snapped Mr Slender. ‘This storeroom is out of bounds. If I catch you in here again, it'll be detention for a week.'

I shot one more look at the wall, then grabbed my bag off the floor. I walked past Mr Slender into the toilets and gave my knee a quick rinse under the tap. The water was icy cold, but I hardly felt it.

Outside the bathroom, the hallway was completely deserted — except for Slender, who stood with his arms folded in front of the janitor's storeroom. Now the door was shut, the panel blended in so well with the ones alongside it that it took me a second to work out which one had opened. I headed toward my English class in a state
of disbelief. What had I just seen? Had a secret passageway really just opened up under the stairs? And if there was a secret passageway, where did it lead?

By lunchtime, I'd simmered down a bit. I was still pretty angry at Sophie, but I really wanted to tell her about what I'd discovered. Still, I wasn't going to let her off the hook that easily. During English I'd sat at the front while she went straight to our usual spot at the back of the room. All the way through class, she kept throwing notes at me:

Sarah was the only girl in our year who Sophie occasionally hung out with. Sarah spent most of her time in the library, so ‘hanging out' with her meant sitting beside her, reading a book. Not exactly my idea of fun.

I wrote a note and threw it back at her.

During lunch I hung around the hallway entrance alone, watching the janitor's storeroom. I was waiting for the hallway to clear; I didn't want anyone nearby while I was checking out the storeroom again. If there was a secret passageway, I wanted to be the first to explore it.

It wasn't until the bell rang, and the last classroom door banged shut, that the corridor was empty. But just as I was about
to step into the hallway, Mr Slender appeared again.

‘Still hanging around out here?' he asked, striding toward me.

‘I was just getting some books out of my locker,' I lied, relieved I happened to be standing near it. I opened my locker door and rummaged around inside, waiting for him to leave.

He stood there watching me until I'd grabbed a couple of books and closed the door again.

‘Off you go,' he said, still glaring at me. ‘And don't forget: detention in my room after school.'

I had no choice. I had to go to class.

The rest of the afternoon dragged. By the time we were in History, our last class of the day, I was sick of being angry at Sophie. I threw her a note:

She threw one back:

I wrote:

I heard her gasp when she opened it. A minute later, another tiny wad of paper hit my back. When the teacher wasn't looking, I picked it up.

Detention was always held in Mr Slender's room. Nobody knew why he always supervised detention, but I'm pretty sure it was because he enjoyed watching people suffer.

I sat at the back of the room, watching the hands of the clock inching around, and secretly reading the emergency zombie comic I kept in my bag. It was an old copy of
Worm Eaten,
which was one of my all-time favourites. I was supposed to be doing
my homework, but, really, what was the point? I mean, it's not like I'd be doing my homework at home if I was there!

Mr Slender sat at the front of the room, watching us from under his eyelids. Occasionally, some kid would think he was asleep and whisper to the person beside them. These kids had obviously never been in detention before. They didn't know that with Mr Slender, if you made one false move, you got a bit of chalk thrown at your head. Or, if you were really unlucky, the duster.

Finally, the clock struck four. Just to be extra mean, Mr Slender pretended to keep sleeping. At five past four, he opened his eyes.

‘I hope never to see any of you in here again,' he said, which was the line he always used at the end of detention.

I rushed out as fast as I could. Sophie
was sitting on the floor near the lockers. She stood up as I walked over to her, while the other kids ran past me to freedom.

‘How come you had detention?' she asked.

‘Long story,' I said. ‘I think it would be easier if I just showed you.'

I glanced around. The place looked deserted. I grabbed Sophie's arm and pulled her into the smaller hallway, toward the old staircase.

‘Where are we going?' she asked.

‘You'll see,' I said.

We stopped outside the toilets.

‘You're not going to make me go into the boys' loos, are you?' She looked around as I fiddled with the panel that opened to the janitor's storeroom.

I was worried someone would come down the hallway and see us. I could
pretend I was coming out of the toilets, but Sophie couldn't. The girls' bathroom was in a completely different part of the building.

‘You wait in here,' I said, opening the door to the boys' toilets and pushing her inside. ‘It'll look suspicious if anyone sees you down here.'

‘I can't go in there!'

‘Don't worry,' I told her. ‘No one will know.'

Sophie started to say something, then she caught sight of a urinal. ‘Yuck! Is that what I think it is?'

I nodded. ‘Yup.'

‘But . . . but . . . everyone can see you! That's disgusting!'

I left Sophie staring in horror at the urinal while I
slipped back out into the hallway. I searched around the panel for a while before I found a tiny catch on one side. The metal was stiff, but finally it clicked beneath my finger. The door creaked open.

I poked my head back into the toilets. ‘C'mon,' I said to Sophie.

She looked happy to be getting out of there.

Sophie followed me into the hallway, and looked at the open panel in surprise.

‘I didn't even know this was here,' she said.

‘Me neither,' I said. ‘But that's not the really weird thing. Check this out.' I stepped inside the cupboard and began poking around the back wall. There had to be a way to make it open again.

‘It kind of stinks in here,' said Sophie. ‘What are you looking for anyway?'

‘When I was going to the toilets to wash my knee this morning, I found . . .' I paused and swallowed hard. ‘I found a secret doorway.'

‘Yeah. It leads to this janitor's storeroom. Can we go?'

‘Not this doorway. Another one. It's here somewhere.' I felt along the wall.

‘What do you mean? I can't see anything.'

‘I know,' I told her. ‘It's a
secret
doorway. It opened when I was standing there, right where you are.'

Sophie looked around at the piles of soap and toilet paper.

‘Maybe I bumped something accidentally, a button or a lever,' I said, running my hand over another wall.

‘Yeah. Or maybe you imagined it.' Sophie was staring at me like I'd gone mad. ‘Do you know how weird this sounds?'