My Zombie Hamster Read online

  EGMONT

  We bring stories to life

  First published by Egmont USA, 2014

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2014 by Havelock McCreely

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McCreely, Havelock, 1975-

  My zombie hamster / Havelock McCreely.

  1 online resource. – (My zombie hamster)

  Summary: Matt Hunter is expecting the latest sword-and-fantasy video game, but he’s in for a disappointment when he receives a hamster for Christmas instead. A hamster called Snuffles. A hamster that dies, but somehow keeps going. A zombie hamster that has his eye on Matt.

  ISBN 978-1-60684-492-2 (eBook) – ISBN 978-1-60684-491-5 (hardcover)

  [1. Hamsters–Fiction. 2. Zombies–Fiction. 3. Family life–Fiction.

  4. Friendship–Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M47841455

  [Fic]–dc23 2014011730

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher and copyright holder.

  v3.1

  To Caroline, Bella, and Caeleb.

  You know who you are and you know why.

  Havelock

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Tuesday, December 24: Christmas Eve

  Wednesday, December 25: The Christmas of D-o-o-o-o-o-o-m

  Thursday, December 26

  Friday, December 27

  Saturday, December 28

  Sunday, December 29

  Monday, December 30

  Tuesday, December 31

  Wednesday, January 1: New Year’s Day

  Thursday, January 2

  Friday, January 3

  Saturday, January 4

  Sunday, January 5

  Monday, January 6

  Tuesday, January 7

  Wednesday, January 8

  Thursday, January 9

  Friday, January 10

  Saturday, January 11

  Sunday, January 12

  Monday, January 13

  Tuesday, January 14

  Wednesday, January 15

  Thursday, January 16

  Friday, January 17

  Saturday, January 18

  Sunday, January 19

  Monday, January 20

  Tuesday, January 21

  Wednesday, January 22

  Thursday, January 23

  Friday, January 24

  Saturday, January 25

  Sunday, January 26

  Monday, January 27

  Tuesday, January 28

  Wednesday, January 29

  Thursday, January 30

  Friday, January 31

  Saturday, February 1

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24

  Christmas Eve

  Christmas Eve is when they change the voice tracks on the Zombie Zappers. Or Zee-Zees, as everyone calls them.

  They’re not really called that. The proper name for a Zee-Zee is Undead Neutralization Unit, or U.N.U. for short. Which is typical of the lack of imagination in adults. They don’t think these things through. These things need to roll off the tongue. They need to be catchy. I mean, how much cooler would it be if they’d called them Zombie Atomizer Pods?

  Z.A.P.s!

  Or Deceased Eradication and Annihilation Devices?

  D.E.A.D.s!

  I think you’ll agree: much better.

  The Zombie Zappers are pretty much exactly what they sound like. You know those little bug killers people hang on their porches during summer? The bugs see this beautiful UV light, fly straight at it, then bzzt!—instant fried bug?

  The Zee-Zees work the same way. Except, instead of bugs, they attract zombies, and, instead of UV light, they use recordings of human voices. The zombies are attracted to these juicy sounds of life, wander into one of the Zee-Zees expecting lunch, and bye-bye zombie.

  I should probably explain about the zombies. (Or deadbeats, as everyone calls them.) There’s a chance this journal will be picked up centuries in the future and you might not know about them.

  What can I say? They’ve been around since before I was born. I’ve never known anything else. Not like my parents. They talk about “before,” when they could walk around in the countryside, or travel from one side of the U.S. to the other without fear of being overrun by crazed, flesh-eating monsters. (Although, when I asked them if they’d ever done any of those things, they got annoyed and said that wasn’t the point. The point was that they could have. Even though they hadn’t.)

  It’s a tradition that the voices of the Zee-Zees are provided by the inhabitants of the town they protect. The winners are picked by lottery, and every Christmas Eve we’re treated to a performance of the new voices that will run all the next year.

  This Christmas Eve was a big one for my family, because my dad had won a place on the voice track. (At least, that’s what he thought.) He’d spent the better part of six months coming up with what he planned to say, keeping it a secret from all of us. Even Mom. (No mean feat, let me tell you.)

  The whole town had gathered for the unveiling of the voice tracks. The families of those who won the lottery were allowed to watch from the top of the twenty-foot-high, ten-foot-thick wall that surrounded Edenvale. While I stood there waiting for the event to get going, shivering and slapping my arms in an attempt to keep warm, I caught a glimpse of Charlie down below.

  Charlie’s my best friend, along with Calvin and Aren, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. We’ve known each other since kindergarten, when someone tried to steal my plastic shovel and she shoved his head into the sand until he begged for mercy.

  I waved down at her. A second later my phone erupted with the sound of a lightsaber igniting. I opened the message to find an animated image of a rotting deadbeat with its eyes dangling out of its sockets. The caption underneath the zombie read: “What you looking at, ugly?”

  I glanced down and saw Charlie grinning up at me. She was never happier than when she was insulting someone.

  My mom flicked the back of my head. “Put that away. It’s about to start.”

  I turned around to join the others. Outside the walls, on the mile-wide stretch of snow-covered grass that circled our town, were the Zombie Zappers. They looked like … well, they looked like portable toilets, to be honest. Green, upright structures barely big enough for one person to stand inside.

  Our mayor cleared his throat. One of his aides quickly assembled a small portable stage for him and helped him climb up. (The mayor was really short. Really, really short.) He now towered above us all, framed against the gray sky.

  As always, the mayor was clutching his dog in his arms. (The dog’s name is Pugsley, and it’s a pug. Yes, Pugsley the pug. As you can see, our mayor is not known for his imagination.) The mayor started his speech, which went on for a long time. A really long time. “… count ourselves lucky, remember the fallen, yada yada yada.”

  My eyelids drooped and my mouth fell open. My brain actually went into screen-saver mode. I only snapped out of it when the drool started to freeze on my lip.

  Finally, it was time for the unveiling of the new voices.

  The first recording to echo from the speakers of the Zee-Zees was a boring poem about life before the deadbeats arrived.

  The next track was a long, really bad song about a time in the not-too-distant future when deadbeats and humans would all just get along and we could return to na
ture like the happy, peaceful people we all were.

  It was terrible, but the zombies seemed to like it. While the song played, a few of them shuffled out of the distant forest, shambling slowly toward the town wall. (Looking like my dad when he gets up in the morning.)

  I say “like it,” but perhaps they just hated folk music and wanted to eat the singer.

  The third voice was simply a list of names of those who had fallen in the zombie war. This was greeted with bowed heads and silence.

  Then it was Dad’s turn. He straightened proudly and grinned at me.

  “You’ll like this, Matt,” he said.

  I’m just going to pause here for a second. Yes, what I did was wrong, and possibly mean. But it was funny, and funny makes up for a lot.

  You see, I spied on my dad. I knew what he had planned for his voice track. He was going to read a short story he had written. Some kind of reversal on what really happened, where the deadbeats were now in charge and the humans were locked out in the forests.

  This kind of thing didn’t go down well with the mayor’s office. Or the Zombie Police. I mean, I’d already seen them giving dirty looks to the folk-singer.

  So, really, I’d been protecting my family from major embarrassment.

  Plus, I’d listened to Dad read his story out loud. It was a good story, I’ll give him that. (My dad’s a writer, after all.) But it lasted for forty-five minutes, and if he thought I was standing up here in the freezing cold for that long, he was farther gone than I’d thought.

  So I switched recordings. I’d made my own voice track after watching some of Dad’s old action movies and replaced the files my dad was sending to city hall.

  I did it for him.

  Well, that’s not really true. I did it for me. But it benefited him.

  There was a moment of silence before the unveiling, then my voice echoed loud and clear over the speakers.

  “Bring it on, zombie scum!”

  “Right this way for the magical carpet ride … of death!”

  “Fresh meat! Fresh meat!”

  “Roll up! Win a prize every time … the prize of death!”

  Hmm. Not great, that one. I was losing a bit of inspiration by this time. But still—not bad.

  At this point, I was doubled over with laughter. But then I noticed the silence spreading out around me. That very particular silence you get when you’ve done something wrong and it’s been discovered.

  I stopped laughing and straightened up. Mom was glaring at me with that special look of hers, and everyone else was shaking their heads and making tut-tut noises. Charlie was laughing hysterically. Dad was trying to look angry, but I could see he was holding in a grin.

  See, that’s the thing about my dad. He’s not truly a grown-up. I don’t think he passed the test they give out when you’re supposed to become a real adult.

  Everyone was so busy glaring at me that no one actually noticed the deadbeats. They’d reacted to my voice track and were heading straight toward the Zee-Zees. Not only that, but it seemed my voice was drawing more out of the trees also. Maybe the zombies liked the same movies my dad did.

  The first deadbeat arrived at the Zee-Zee directly below us and stumbled inside with a drawn-out moan. There was a bright flash of light, an electrical hum, then a sad little wisp of smoke drifted up into the gray sky.

  I lifted my hands in the air and did a little victory dance.

  Then Mom grabbed my ear and dragged me back home.

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25

  The Christmas of D-o-o-o-o-o-o-m

  10:00 a.m. So far, today has been a total waste of time. I don’t know why I even bother asking for presents. Every year it’s the same thing.

  “Matt,” my mom says, “what do you want Santa to bring you?”

  And every year since I was eight, I give my mom a look of utter scorn that she fails to recognize and tell her what I want Santa to bring.

  Then on Christmas morning I unwrap a gift that is light-years away from what I asked for.

  I’m not talking slightly different here, like the kind of mistake you expect parents to make. (For instance, asking for Runespell 5 and being given the expansion pack for Runespell 4 instead.) That kind of thing is expected. You clear a spot on your day-after-Christmas schedule to head off to the mall on an exchange run, where you join the lines of others doing exactly the same thing.

  No, what I’m talking about is so extreme it can only be intentional. I reckon my parents are either, A: experimenting on me, to see what kind of adult they can create by constantly disappointing me as a child, or B: they’ve laid bets on how long it will take for me to break down and ask to see a shrink.

  This year I asked for the Runesword that would let me play Runespell without the control pad. (My cleric is twenty-eighth level, and I’ve been playing him for two years now.) Charlie, Calvin, and Aren are all asking for the same thing, and we planned on spending Christmas afternoon playing online.

  Guess what I got. Go on. I bet you’ll never get it.

  Give up?

  Fine.

  I got a hamster.

  I’m not even kidding.

  A hamster.

  Called Snuffles.

  I stared at my parents as they stood next to the Christmas tree. I thought it was some kind of joke, that they would step aside with a flourish and shout “Surprise!” as they handed over the sword.

  No such luck. Instead, they stared at me expectantly with big smiles on their faces.

  “We know it’s not what you asked for,” said Mom.

  A million points to Mom for stating the obvious.

  Dad stepped in. “But your mother—that is, we—thought this would be better for you,” he said. “Teach you how to look after something, to nurture another living being. That kind of thing.”

  I didn’t want to nurture another living being! I wanted to cut down hordes of goblins with a plastic sword! Why couldn’t people understand that? It was a very simple concept.

  I looked at Snuffles. He was standing on his hind legs, staring at me with eyes as black as a shark’s. I got the distinct feeling he was laughing at me.

  Still, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I forced a smile onto my face. “Um … thanks?”

  But because I had to express my disappointment somehow, I decided to resort to a bit of passive-aggressiveness.

  “I’ll just watch him on his wheel while Charlie and the others are fighting goblins and orcs with their swords.”

  I should have known that kind of thing was too subtle for them.

  “You see?” Mom said to Dad. “I told you he’d prefer a hamster to a stupid sword.”

  Dad said nothing, but I noticed the brief look of shame that flashed across his face.

  He knew! He knew how I would feel about the hamster, and he caved in to Mom.

  I’d make him pay for that.

  I looked at Katie’s presents. No Christmas morning disappointment for her. She got the huge dollhouse she asked for as well as the really expensive dolls that went with it.

  Was that fair?

  1:00 p.m. My mom’s sister, Aunt Carla, and Gran arrived while Mom was preparing Christmas dinner.

  Gran’s first words when she came through the door were, “Smells like something’s burning.”

  Mom sprinted to the kitchen to check on the turkey. Gran smiled at me while Aunt Carla looked around her with her usual expression of disapproval. (She looks like she’s constantly sucking on a lemon. Her mouth is all pursed and frowny.) She ran her finger over the bannister, checking for dust. Muffled wails erupted from the kitchen.

  It had started.

  2:00 p.m. My mom must have inherited her gift-giving genes from Gran. Katie got gift vouchers to spend on whatever she wanted. I was really happy when I saw that. I could put them toward buying the Runesword I wanted.

  But my destiny in life is to be constantly disappointed. Mom and Gran must have conspired, because Gran got me one of those weird hamster houses. You k
now, the ones that have the two holes in the casing that you attach all those plastic tubes to. You’re supposed to spend your allowance on buying more of the tubes and make all those weird shapes so the hamster can climb through them and have “hours of hamstery fun,” as the box puts it.

  “Can I trade it in for the cash instead?” I asked.

  Mom opened her mouth, probably to shout at me, but before she could say anything there was a heavy knock at the door.

  2:30 p.m. A few minutes later, we (and everyone else in the street) had been herded out of our houses and told to stand in the freezing cold, hopping from foot to foot while tall, scary officials dressed head to toe in black body armor ordered us around like cattle.

  Our street was undergoing a surprise Zombie Squad inspection.

  The Zombie Squad’s job is to make sure that everyone who said they were alive really was alive and hadn’t passed away and turned into a zombie or something.

  That was everyone’s greatest fear: a deadbeat turning up inside Edenvale’s walls.

  “The longer you complain, the longer this will take!” shouted the leader of the squad. He wore a black helmet with a tinted visor covering the top half of his face. He looked a bit like RoboCop. Or Judge Dredd.

  “It’s Christmas Day!” said Mom, who happened to be first in line. “Why didn’t you do this last week?”

  The man tilted his head down and stared at Mom. He probably expected this to intimidate her, but he obviously didn’t know my mom.

  “I’m cooking Christmas dinner,” she said. “You didn’t even let me turn the oven off. If my turkey burns I’m suing you.”

  “Ma’am, do you think I want to be here? Don’t you think I’d rather be at home with my own family on Christmas Day?”

  Mom softened slightly, and the Zombie Squad leader bared his teeth in what might have been a smile.

  “But I don’t have a family, do I? So to answer your question, yes, we could have done this last week, but it’s easier for us to do it today. Everyone gathered at their homes on Christmas Day? Makes our job a hundred times easier. Wrist!”

  Mom bit her tongue and held out her wrist. The Zombie Squad leader ran a handheld device over the lifechip embedded deep beneath her skin, then read the display.