Zombiefied! (8 page)

It was Slender. It had to be. I glanced around wildly. I had to make a run for it, but which way?

I'd read somewhere that when you were lost in a maze you should keep to one direction, either the left or the right, and you would eventually get out. I didn't really understand how that was supposed to work, but right then I didn't have any other ideas.

I chose the left-hand tunnel and started running.
It sounded like the footsteps were getting closer, although it was a bit hard to tell because I was breathing so hard. I came to another fork in the tunnel and again chose the left side. This tunnel was wider and, instead of little rooms, there were more tunnels branching off it. As I raced past their open, black mouths, cold air blew over me. I ditched my bag in an empty room and kept running.

But it didn't seem to matter how fast I went — the person, the
thing
, was gaining on me. A stitch formed in my side. I could hardly breathe. Then, out of nowhere, I was running on air. My torch went flying. I landed on my hands and knees.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

Before I could get up, there was a hideous screech and an enormous weight landed on my back, squashing me flat.

‘AAAGGHHHH!' I heard someone scream and realised that it was me. Man! Did I really sound like that? ‘AAAAGGGGHHH!' I guess so.

‘IT'S OOOOKKAAAAAYYYYYYY!' screamed another voice. ‘It's MEEEEEE!'

It took a few seconds for me to realise that I hadn't been attacked by a Cannibal Corpse from
The Zombie Returns
. ‘Sophie?'

By now she had climbed off me and was dusting herself down. ‘Thanks for breaking my fall. Are you OK?'

‘I think so.' I was still pretty shaken by the whole thing, but I didn't seem to have any injuries other than the gravel rash on my palms and knees, which I had scraped pretty badly on the rocky ground. I clambered to my feet, found the torch, and shone it on the ground behind to see what had tripped us. It was a steep step.

I turned to Sophie. ‘What are you doing down here? How did you find me?'

‘When I realised you'd left History early, I guessed you had gone to Mr Slender's room to check out the cupboard. I noticed your pencil wedged between the wall and the door, so I pushed it open and followed the sound of your footsteps.'

‘So you believe me now?'

‘Sure.' Sophie found the Fuzzil, which had fallen off her shoulder, and as she stuck it back onto her collar she muttered, ‘Sorry.'

‘That's OK,' I said. Secretly, I was relieved to see her. ‘Anyway, I dunno if we should go any further. We don't want to get lost.'

‘Let's go back and check out the other tunnel,' said Sophie, turning back the way we'd come. ‘The big one with the light.'

‘What one with the light?' I asked. How did I miss that?

‘It's just back here.'

For the first time, I noticed she held a small torch. ‘Did you bring that?' I asked as I trotted along behind.

‘Nah. Found it in Slender's cupboard,' she explained. ‘I guess he uses it when he comes down here.'

As we walked, I realised that the ground was sloping slightly upward, which I hadn't noticed while I'd been running. We were also a lot further into the tunnels than I'd thought.

After a few minutes Sophie stopped before the mouth of a tunnel that branched off to the right. I peered into the opening; it was bigger than any of the other tunnels I'd seen. A strange smell drifted from it and there was a sound too, although one I didn't recognise. It was a high-pitched screeching sound, like fingernails running down a blackboard.

‘C'mon.' Sophie began walking down the tunnel.

Nervously, I followed. Around the first bend, the tunnel widened even further. On either side, old wooden doors were placed at regular intervals, some shut, some slightly ajar. I opened one. Inside was a small room. It was empty except for a pile of bricks in one corner where part of the wall had collapsed.

‘Come on!' hissed Sophie impatiently.
I closed the door and we kept walking until we rounded another corner.

A pair of big metal doors stood in front of us. They were tightly closed, but on one door, about halfway up, was an enormous old latch with a key jutting out of it.

Above the doors was a sign.

‘What does
Rattus
mean?' asked Sophie.

‘I'm not sure,' I said, feeling pretty certain I didn't want to find out. Then, before I could stop her, Sophie reached out and turned the key.

She pushed the doors open.

The sound and smell hit me at the same time. It was like we had walked into a sewer filled with howling ghosts. I tried not to be sick, although I couldn't stop the hairs on the back of my neck from standing upright.

‘It's OK,' said Sophie. Her face was stark white. ‘They're in cages.'

Even though every instinct in my body told me to run away, I edged forward.

Through the doorway was a big room. I shone my torch around; the walls were made of stone, just like the tunnels, and
they were lined with cages stacked two or three high. Inside these were rats.

Now I haven't seen that many rats in my time, but these were nothing like the friendly white rats that are sold in pet stores. These guys were huge and grey and covered with patchy fur. Their eyes were bright red and some of them had bits missing; a leg here, an ear there. As the beams from our torches swept over them, they snarled and turned away from the light.

We crept further into the room. I noticed that every cage had a plastic water dispenser attached to it. Most of the dispensers were full.

‘Who put these animals here?' I asked.

‘And how did they do it?' said Sophie. ‘I wouldn't be game to try to catch rats like these.'

The rats sniffed the air as we walked past, and began flinging themselves at the bars of their cages. Some of them ripped at the metal with their teeth or tried to squeeze through the gaps.

‘They can smell us,' I said, watching a rat that seemed desperate to get at us. We'd get eaten alive if they managed to get out of their cages!

‘I think they have rage issues,' agreed Sophie. ‘Hey, look at this.'

She pointed the beam of her torch above the cages. Scrawled in chalk on the stone wall opposite us was the word ‘half'. On the wall nearest us was the word ‘full'. ‘The “full” ones look way scarier than the “half” ones.'

I gazed at the rats. She was right. The ‘half' rats looked
almost
normal. I mean,
they were still freaky and their eyes were still red, but they weren't quite as big and ragged. And they didn't look as vicious.

I shone my torch across to the far end of the room.

‘Look!'

In the middle of the back wall was another set of doors, like the ones we'd just walked through. Then I noticed the sign above them. I walked over to the doors and peered upward. I could just make out the words:

‘What does that mean?' asked Sophie, her voice shaking.

I didn't answer. Surely it couldn't be worse than the rats, could it?

I turned the key this time. My hands were shaking so much I could hardly move my fingers. I slowly opened the doors.

The hairs on the back of my neck leapt straight up; inside the room, it sounded like a thousand zombies were screaming for brains! The smell was just as bad as the rat room, but this time the cages were bigger — and so were the animals in them.

‘Dogs,' breathed Sophie.

They were snarling and growling and pacing around their cages. Like the rats, their eyes glowed bright red. We edged inside.

‘They're bulldogs,' she said. ‘My next-door neighbour used to have one.'

‘Do they like bulls?' I asked.

Sophie smiled nervously. ‘No. They were used to hunt them. The dogs would track them by following their scent.'

I shuddered.

There were at least twenty dogs in cages. Instead of being stacked, the cages stood alongside each other on the floor. Their doors were attached to black chains that stretched up and disappeared toward the ceiling. That must be how the dogs are put into the cages, I thought.
Or let out of them.

Just the thought of the dogs being let out made me want to pee myself.

‘They're not that bad,' said Sophie, looking into a big cage that contained three dogs. ‘I think they're kind of cute.'

‘Yeah. If you like animals that want to tear you apart for fun!'

She ignored me. ‘Look! That one wants to play with his ball.'

I stared. ‘That's not a ball.'

‘Ewwww!' said Sophie, backing away.

We wandered around the room, staring at the animals. Why would someone want to keep all these dogs? And what was
wrong
with them?

‘How do you think they got like this?' I said.

‘I don't know . . .' Sophie began, as she went over to the far corner of the room. Then she stopped. ‘Hang on, I think I've just found the answer.'

I walked over to where she stood in front of an old table. On it was a bottle.

She lifted it up. Brownish liquid swirled around inside it.

‘There's a tag,' she said, peering at a bit of paper tied to the neck of the bottle. She read aloud: ‘“Formula 1037 — USE WITH CAUTION! EFFECT IS IMMEDIATE AND PERMANENT!”'

‘Is it some sort of medicine?' I asked.

‘I don't think so,' said Sophie. She put the bottle back down carefully. ‘I think they've all been given this.
I think it's what turned them into . . . something else.'

‘What
are
they?' I said, staring at the creatures that had once been dogs.

‘I'm not sure exactly,' said Sophie in a shaking voice. ‘But I think we should get out of here before whoever did this to them comes back.'