TorrentBoy: Zombie World!
by MCM
© 2009 1889 Labs Ltd.
Smashwords Edition
This book is Creative Commons licensed (CC-NC-SA)
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Wrong
Disaster struck Wesley just when he least expected it. If he hadn't been checking his Tracker Watch, he might have seen it coming—
"So, Wesley," said a voice out of nowhere, "how did Gulliver escape the Lilliputians?"
Wesley blanked. He smiled weakly.
"Uh — what?" he stammered.
"The book," repeated Mrs Goldfield, at the head of the class, "The book we're all reading. You do remember we're reading a book, don't you, Wesley?"
Wesley looked down at his desk, and sure enough, there was a book there.
"Absolutely," he said, trying to sound like he knew what was going on.
"Excellent!" exclaimed Mrs Goldfield, "So then you should be able to tell me how Gulliver escaped the Lilliputians."
Wesley looked down at his book. There were lots of words there, but he didn't remember reading any of them. He didn't know who the Lilliputians were, and he definitely didn't know how to escape them.
He was thinking he could try confusing Mrs Goldfield by jumping up on his desk and performing a few songs from The Sound of Music, but he'd done that yesterday and she didn't look like she was ready for more tap dancing just yet.
His only hope was to delay.
"That's an interesting question," he said smoothly, leaning back in his chair, "Maybe we should discuss it as class. You know— really get to the bottom of it?"
Mrs Goldfield did not think so.
"Wesley Wilson," she said sternly, "have you been paying any attention at all in this class?"
"Starting when?"
"The very beginning!"
"I don't think I was born at the very beginning. Come to think of it, neither were you. That was a long time ago — like, millions and kazillions of years ago. Hey! Maybe we could talk about that instead!"
Mrs Goldfield was rubbing her head in that way she did before she sent Wesley to the office. He started packing up his pencils so he'd be ready.
Next to him, a red-headed girl named Gabby was rolling her eyes. She was like the polar opposite of Wesley: smart in class, good at sports, and popular. On the other hand, she wasn't nearly as witty as he was. And she was a girl. So there.
"Mrs Goldfield," she said, raising her hand, "I know how Gulliver escaped."
"He showed them a picture of you and they all ran away?" Wesley cracked.
Gabby glared at him. He stuck his tongue out at her, and she just rolled her eyes again. She always did that. It was girl code for "I'm too dumb to think of a proper response."
But then he saw it: the Tracker Watch was flashing red! He must have missed it when he was being distracted by books and what Gulliver ate for breakfast!
He tapped the watch and in an instant, a voice squeaked out in at a frequency only Wesley could hear. It was Rezzit, the body-less computer that could do anything from creating an energy shield to defend against alien attacks— all the way down to checking math questions in Wesley's homework.
"Danger detected at the sewage treatment plant!" Rezzit shouted urgently, like he did for absolutely everything that happened in life, "Urgent!"
Wesley nodded, looking around the room for a reason to leave. Aside from singing songs and dancing on tables.
Apparently, Rezzit thought he was too slow: "Don't just sit there and nod! Do something!"
Wesley frowned at the watch.
"Give me a second, I'm in class here," he whispered.
"Boo hoo! Poor baby! Did I mention it's URGENT?"
"Quit it!" Wesley hissed.
"What did you say?" growled Mrs Goldfield.
Wesley looked up quickly, smiled sweetly.
"I sneezed. Kerchoo. Dusty in here. Woo."
"Good recovery."
"You be quiet!" Wesley whispered.
"Wesley told me to be quiet!" Gabby complained to Mrs Goldfield.
"I did not!"
"Did so!"
"Did not!" Wesley argued, "If I had, I would've said 'be quiet, stupidface'!".
Gabby's mouth dropped open.
"Mr Wilson!" Mrs Goldfield boomed, "I think it's about time you took a trip to the office!"
Uh oh! Going to the office was the worst thing that could happen! There was no way he could sneak out to the sewage treatment plant if he was stuck sitting outside the Principal's office! He had to think fast!
"Mrs Goldfield!" he said suddenly, "I have to go!"
"Go?" she said suspiciously, "Go where?"
"Bathroom!"
Mrs Goldfield glared at him. She trusted him just about as much as a fish trusts a cat. A cat in scuba gear. With a fork.
"Why?" she said slowly.
"Diarrhea!" he groaned loudly.
Mrs Goldfield still didn't trust him, but she wasn't sure she wanted to take chances with diarrhea. Not after last week with Lucas in the library—
"Mr Wilson, if you -"
"Ah!" yelled Wesley, smacking his head into his desk for effect, "I can't hold it anymore!"
"Go! Go! Just go!" Mrs Goldfield screamed, rubbing her head furiously, "Don't you dare make a mess in my classroom!"
Wesley jumped out of his seat and waddled to the door sideways like a tap-dancing hermit crab, and waved good-bye to everyone before he left. Especially Gabby. She looked like she wanted to stick four pencils up each of his nostrils.
"And just remember!" Mrs Goldfield yelled after him, "You'll have to answer the question about Gulliver when you get back! You can't escape!"
"No kidding," Wesley muttered to himself, as he ran down the hall towards the exit. When he was clear, he tapped back into Rezzit to get more information.
"So it's a sewage treatment plant for sure?" he asked.
"No, I'm making things up for fun. It's a candy factory. And they want you to taste a new kind of chocolate bar. Mmm, yummy. YES OF COURSE IT'S A SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT!"
"Sheesh, I was just asking—"
"Ask better questions from now on. You're giving me a headache like Mrs Goldfield, and I don't even have a head!"
Wesley shot down the stairs towards the front door, careful not to disturb the Principal, who had a very bad habit of putting Wesley in detention for no good reason.
"Where's Crash gone to?" Wesley asked as he slipped out the door and into the school yard, "Can he just meet us at the plant, or do I need to pick him up first?"
"You don't have time for that," sighed Rezzit, "and besides, you don't need him."
"He usually comes in handy," Wesley noted.
"No, I come in handy. He makes a lot of noise and breaks things by mistake."
"Still, we should probably find him."
"Yeah, fine. I'll see what I can do. But you know— chances are, he's got his head stuck in a trash can or something."
Crash-tastic
Crash had his head stuck in a trash can.
Again.
To be fair, it was amazingly easy to get your head stuck in a trash can when you were a teddy bear, but on the other hand, Crash did it quite a lot. Three times this week alone.
But to him, the problem wasn't that his head was stuck, it was that he wasn't able to grab the glowing green butterfly in the bottom of the trash can, because his arms weren't long enough. He had stretched and pushed and done everything he could, but it was no use.
"Bubberfwy," he said to it in his most serious-sounding voice, "Pwease come here."
The butterfly did not answer him. It was a butterfly, after all.
"Bubberfwy," he said again, "I don't wanna hurt you. Pwease come here! Pwease!"
And with that, the butterfly flew up, up onto Crash's nose, and sat itself down. Crash was so happy, he nearly ate the butterfly by mistake. He struggled and pushed and twisted and finally got himself free from the trash can, carefully keeping both eyes on the butterfly to make sure it didn't go away.
"Now Mr Bubberfwy," he said seriously, "Dis is wery important: where did you hide my waser bwaster?"
The butterfly, as usual, said nothing. However, as odd as it seemed, it was not completely crazy for Crash to ask a butterfly that kind of question. Especially if the butterfly was glowing green.
There is a very special kind of creature called a Parasitical Vertus, which is more annoying than a five-year-old who's had fifteen cups of espresso. Parasitical Vertuses (PVs for short) like to steal things from people and hide them in places you'll never think to look. For instance, the famous painter Vincent van Gogh once had his ear stolen by a PV and hidden in a can of kidney beans. He only discovered the truth when he was trying to make himself some chilli a few weeks later.
PVs always glow green, which makes them easy to spot. However, not everything that glows green is a PV. So Crash may have been completely crazy trying to catch the butterfly, but he might also have been only partly insane.
"It's okay," said Crash, trying to sound as nice as he could, "I won't be angwy at all, I pwomise. Just pwease tell me where you hid it."
The butterfly twitched a wing like it was going to answer—
— but no, it was still just a butterfly.
Crash sighed.
"If you don't tell me, I'm gonna hafta squish you!" he warned, showing his big, furry hands. "Now huwwy up, 'cause I might hafta go soon and save da world, and I can't do dat wiffout my waser bwaster!"
The butterfly obviously did not care about saving the world, because it immediately took off into the air, right out of Crash's reach, and fluttered happily away down the street.
Crash growled to himself and popped the racing wheels out of the bottoms of his feet.
"Okey dokie, Mr Bubberfwy," he said angrily, "you had your chance. No more Mr Nice-Bear—"
And he raced off after the glowing green butterfly, completely ignoring how his watch was beeping loudly as Rezzit tried to reach him—
The Crater
The sewage treatment plant had a hole in the roof big enough to fit three buses through, and thick brown smoke was oozing into the sky.
What was also oozing was the smell of thousands of litres of raw sewage, which was starting to leak onto the street. Normally, when you flush the toilet, that whole mess goes down into the sewers and off to a sewage treatment plant to be cleaned up and turned into soy sauce— because the treatment plant was now considerably broken, it wasn't cleaning much at all. And it smelled awful.
"Is this the place?" Wesley said aloud as he approached.
"Nah, it's a barbecue party," said Rezzit, "of course it's the place! It's on fire!"
"You're cranky," Wesley said.
"And you're dumb. What a nice couple we are."
"Have you contacted Crash yet?"
"He's not answering. He probably ate his watch again. I don't know why you put up with him. He drops fluff all over the floor and he smells like a soggy dog."
"At least he's not cranky."
"Ooo, wow, that hurt my feelings," Rezzit snarked. He was very snarky sometimes.
The front doors to the building had been blown off their hinges, so Wesley had no trouble getting through. He switched on the Tracker Watch's lights and made his way inside.
"Smells like burnt eggs," Wesley coughed as he passed through an empty office.
"That's not all," said Rezzit, "I'm seeing serious interference in TorrentSpace. Whatever's in here, it's creating some kind of bubble that eats torrents."
"Super. Just what I need—" sighed Wesley.
He pushed a chair and slid a bookcase out of the way so he could get through a door at the far end of the office. But behind the bookcase wasn't another room, it was a giant crater in the ground, like an asteroid had smashed into this building and chewed up its middle.
"Whoa," said Wesley, trying not to fall into the hole, "That's not what I was expecting at all. Are you seeing this?"
"No, I'm suddenly blind."
"Again with the cranky—"
"If you had to talk to you all the time, you'd be cranky too."
In the depths of the hole and in between streams of smoke, Wesley could make out the faint gleam of metal.
"Wait a second — is that a machine in there?"
He held a finger over the Tracker Watch.
"Digital zoom!" he called, and instantly his eyes shone blue and he could see inside the crater with amazing detail.
Sure enough, there was a giant gleaming machine, shaped like a huge wasp nest, glowing with dozens of tiny yellow lights.
"What is that thing?"
"A giant elephant."
"Really?"
"No, not really."
"Oh. Good. I think."
"So are you going to blow it up or what?"
Wesley frowned and looked around himself. The building was obviously empty, but given the size of the machine, he was pretty sure it was going to cause a big explosion.
"You think I can? Even my TorrentBoy armour can't protect me from a fireball."
"Well duh, that's why I'm going to make you a force field first."
"Wow, cool! I didn't know you were that useful!"
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," warned Rezzit, "no, it's not something I've done before. But I think I can pull enough torrent energy into the Tracker Watch to make a small bubble that will keep you safe."
"Sounds great. Iffy, but great."
"Just don't go making a habit of getting caught in explosions."
"I'll do my best, but I can't promise anything."
"I know. Boy, do I know—"
Wesley stood back from the door, giving himself enough room to transform. It was always a messy operation turning into TorrentBoy, and he hated it when stray papers smacked him in the face before his helmet went on. Paper cuts on the nose are not fun.
"All right! You ready, Rezzit?"
"I have no body. What's there to get ready?"
"Then let's do it! Torrent o-"
"Aha!" came a voice from behind, and Wesley nearly swallowed his own tongue. He spun around and came face-to-face with Gabby! She's followed him! How annoying could she be?
"What are you doing here?" she said suspiciously, poking him in the chest with an extra-pointy finger.
"What am I doing here?" Wesley sputtered, trying to act cool despite almost being caught turning into TorrentBoy. "What are you doing here?"
"Same as you," she smiled, "going to the bathroom."
Wesley smiled weakly.
"Oh. Um—"
"This is a really long way to go for a potty break, don't you think?" Gabby smirked, looking around the burnt-out office. "Did you get lost on the way down the hall?"
"Something like that," Wesley said quietly.
"Hmm. Maybe I should tell Mrs Goldfield about your little trip. I bet she'd love to know you were busy looking at — at —"
Gabby peered into the crater. She wrinkled her nose up at the smell.
"It's a big fat machine thing," Wesley told her.
"Oh! And here I thought it was a giant elephant!" Gabby said dryly.
"Ha! She's funny!" laughed Rezzit.
Wesley grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back into the office. He looked at her seriously.
"Gabby, go back to class. It's dangerous here."
"So why are you here, then?" she asked suspiciously, "If it's not too dangerous for you, it's definitely not too dangerous for me. You can't even dribble a basketball."
"Can too," countered Wesley.
"Hitting yourself in the face is not called dribbling."
"It's a special technique — and anyway, that's not important! You need to get out of here!"
Gabby crossed her arms and leaned back against the door, and peered down into the smoke again. She was not going anywhere.
Wesley growled to himself and stalked back into the office to talk to Rezzit.
"Rezzit, do you think it would be cruel of me to let Gabby get stuck in the explosion?"
"I would have to say 'yes' to that."
"But she doesn't want to leave!"
"So convince her!"
Wesley stomped his feet furiously.
"Argh! She's so annoying!"
"Welcome to my world, kid," Rezzit sighed.
Wesley looked back at Gabby, who was looking more annoying than ever. If he couldn't make her leave alone, he'd have to find some other way to keep her safe when the machine blew up—
"Hey Rezzit, do you think you could make two of those force field bubbles?"
"What do I look like, Force Field Depot? It took me a lot of work just to make the one bubble. I can't make two."
"Maybe -" Wesley began.
"No, I can't make the first one bigger."
"Argh! So what do I do now?"
"I don't know, but whatever you do, make it quick. It's hard to hold this much torrent energy in place while you yak with your girlfriend."
"She's not my girlfriend!"
"Suuuuure she's not—"
Wesley snapped the Watch off and stormed over to Gabby. He grabbed the back of her shirt, and with a lot more strength than he knew he had, he dragged her back out of the office.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" she yelled.
"Saving your butt!" he said, "Now get going before something bad happens!"
"Like what?" she snarled, trying to get free.
But before Wesley could answer, the whole room shook in a horrible lurch, and the two of them toppled to the floor. The ground started to tremble heavily, and Wesley heard the faint sounds of angry screeching.
"What's going on?" yelled Gabby, starting to sound scared, "Is it the machine?"
"I don't know!" shouted back Wesley, trying to reach the Watch to ask Rezzit—
Just then, the floor exploded in a burst of rock and metal, throwing Wesley and Gabby into the air, away from each other! Wesley reached a hand out to her, but couldn't catch her as she disappeared into smoke and grime!
"Help!" she screamed through the smoke.
Leeches
Gabby landed against the wall in a pile of rubble, and coughed out dirt as she rolled to her knees. It was almost impossible to see, but she heard growling and a slimy sound, like a giant bowl of angry macaroni and cheese.
"Wesley? Wesley! What's going on?" she yelled.
As the smoke cleared, she came face-to-face with six giant armoured leeches. They were shiny black, covered with rough metal plates and had red eyes glowing behind spiky masks.
They were moving towards her carefully, and she could see their sharp teeth glistening.
"Um, Wesley? Anybody? Help please?"
She looked around for some place to run, but the only way out was past the monsters. She grabbed a broken table leg from the floor and held it up like a baseball bat, ready to fight. There were six of them and only one of her, and they were pretty darn big. She gulped nervously.
The closest leech charged at her, and Gabby barely dodged it before it whooshed past! It crunched into the brick wall and gurgled an angry scream, then started to turn to chase her again.
She took the table leg and slammed it into the leech's head, but the leg broke in two and threw bits of wood everywhere. The leech didn't look hurt. It looked mad.
The leech raced at her again, and she had nowhere to escape. She jumped up over its mask (narrowly avoiding the spikes) and tried to run along its back, but it was so slippery that she lost her balance and fell to the ground.
The leech spun around and lifted itself up to pounce, and Gabby knew she was toast!
"Hey ugly," said a voice from the darkness, "munch on this."
And then a blue laser blast tore through the room and knocked the leech back against the wall, where it squealed angrily.
Gabby and the other leeches turned to the darkness, and out of the smoke walked TorrentBoy, his blaster ready for action!
"You all right?" he asked Gabby, keeping his blaster aimed at the first leech.
"Just a little dizzy," she said, getting to her feet.
"Hold tight. I've got to teach these guys some table manners."
The other five leeches gave up on Gabby and started to circle TorrentBoy, who watched them all carefully. They sniffed the air, inched closer to him.
"How about you guys go back underground?" TorrentBoy smirked, powering up his blaster again. "That way, nobody gets hurt."
The closest leech growled loudly and then leapt forward, teeth chomping madly. TorrentBoy ducked, using his arm braces to shove the leech over him and onto the ground, where it landed with a crunch.
Before he could celebrate, two more leeches attacked him from the sides, each one grabbing an arm. Their teeth latched into his armour and started sucking, and he could hear a low whine as the power to his suit started oozing away.
He grunted under the strain, trying to break free. He couldn't aim his blaster, and he knew he was running out of time.
Just then, two more leeches started charging towards his head! He kicked out with both feet and smacked them back, but that only made them crankier — he was a sitting duck!
"Rezzit!" he grunted, "Any ideas?"
"Try not to taste good."
"Thanks."
The leeches were coming for a second attack — he had only seconds left. With all his might, he pushed his right arm until he could point his blaster at the two leeches. The blaster was nearly out of power itself. He only had one shot at this.
"Hey guys," he called, "say cheese!"
He shot a blast at the closest leech, knocking it onto another one. The two of them slammed into the one holding TorrentBoy's left arm, and in a flash he had made a fist, glowing bright with orange electricity, which he punched straight into the fourth leech's face.
The leeches all reeled, weak and angry. They were hurt, but not ready to quit. They didn't just want to suck energy anymore: they wanted to destroy TorrentBoy for good!
His suit made noises like it was powering down, and he checked the Tracker Watch only to discover he was completely drained!
"Rezzit! I need some help here! Get me some more power! Fast!"
"Give me a minute—"
"I think we've got a lot less than a minute!"
The leeches charged again, taking turns smacking him with their scaly tails, and he hit the ground hard as they formed a circle around him. The one he'd blasted came so close he could smell its breath - like mouldy vinegar.
"Ready!" shouted Rezzit, "Go! Go! Go!"
TorrentBoy checked the Tracker Watch quickly: not enough power to blast this many leeches away — but he had another idea—
"Gabby!" he shouted, "Take cover!"
He quickly put his hand to the Tracker Watch, and called out:
"Torrent Flash! Now!"
Suddenly, a bright lightning bolt flew from the sky, straight through the building, and when it hit the Tracker Watch, it exploded outwards, showering the room with glowing hot lasers, like flaming glass out of a broken mirror.
The leeches screamed with pain and lurched back into their holes, tunnelling furiously. Finally, their screams echoed into silence. They were gone.
"That was fun. Let's do it again sometime," said Rezzit.
"Let's not," grunted TorrentBoy, getting to his feet. "Gabby! Are you hurt?"
Gabby came out from behind a flaming table and stretched her legs creakily.
"I'm okay," she said, "thanks for saving me."
"No problem. Kicking leech butt is what I do best."
"It's pretty much all you do."
"Well, either way," smiled Gabby, "it was great that you were here to—"
But before she could finish her sentence, the room started shaking violently, knocking TorrentBoy and Gabby to the ground again!
"What's going on?" Gabby shouted, "Are they coming back?"
TorrentBoy scanned the ground with his Digital Zoom, and his mouth dropped open in shock.
"Much worse!" he yelled over the noise, "I think the machine in the crater is about the explode!"
Up and Down
Crash was on the top floor of a very tall building, hanging off the edge of a flag pole as the butterfly took a rest on a window sill. He was just the tiniest bit too far away to reach it, so he was shuffling his furry little feet closer, hoping it wouldn't see him until it was too late.
"Just a wittle bit more—" he muttered to himself.
The very tip of his hand touched the butterfly's wing, and then — then — the butterfly flew away, up higher into the sky where Crash had no hope of catching it.
He sighed to himself.
"If I don't get my bwaster back, Wezzit is going to be vewy cwanky wiff me," he cried, "Where did you put it, bubberfwy? Where?"
Just then, a big red balloon floated up past Crash, lazily climbing into the sky, up where the green butterfly had gone. Crash didn't even pause to think: he jumped out and grabbed the string at the bottom of the balloon, so he could catch the fluttery thief!
"Aha!" he laughed as he snatched the string, looking up at the butterfly.
Unfortunately for Crash, he was quite a bit heavier than the balloon could hold, so instead of going up, he went down. Quickly.
"Yeep!" he squeaked as he streaked past the building, straight towards the ground.
Luckily for Crash, he didn't hit the ground directly: he bounced off a patio umbrella and flew back into the air! He did a triple-somersault with a twist and then went plonk right down on the sidewalk, doing the splits.
"Ouch," he said, trying to fix his legs. Doing the splits was not the kind of thing he wanted to be doing, especially if there were people around to see him.
But before he could finish fixing himself, he noticed the gentle movements of the green butterfly as it drifted down, hovering happily right next to him. It was so close! He could get it now, this time for sure!
He reached out to grab it, and then — a pair of chubby little hands squished the butterfly flat!
"Flutterby!" exclaimed a three-year-old girl with pigtails and a slobbery face, "Mommy, I gotsa flutterby!"
She opened her hands and Crash could see the butterfly was very much squished. It wasn't moving at all. The girl shoved it into her pocket along with a dirty candy wrapper she found on the sidewalk, and smushed them down roughly. Crash nearly cried right there on the spot. But before he could—
"A teddy!" the girl squealed and picked Crash up in a scary, twisty, head-popping-offy hug, "Mommy, I foundsa teddy!"
Crash really wanted to fight the girl off, but he remembered that Rezzit had made him promise not to hurt children anymore. Even slobbery three-year-old girls. He shivered.
"Mommy, mommy!" the girl cackled, bouncing along, holding Crash by the neck in a way that made him more and more angry every second, "I foundsa a flutteryby and a teddy!"
"That's nice, dear," said the mother, probably not paying attention to the girl because the girl was obviously completely insane.
Crash could almost see the edge of the butterfly's wing poking out of the girl's pocket. He would have to wait, but when the time was right, he would grab the butterfly and escape, and then he would have his laser blaster, and be able to save the world.
Hopefully.
Rupture
A giant fireball burst out of the crater and shot into the sky, throwing ash everywhere. TorrentBoy ran across the room and grabbed Gabby by the arm, and yanked her out of the building before a second fireball scorched the office.
Outside, the sidewalk was starting to crack from the awful tremors, and the shopping centre across the street was covered in broken windows.
"We've got to get out of here!" Gabby shouted, looking to her bike, which she'd locked to a nearby lamp post.
Just then, a large chunk of the sewage treatment plant dropped on the bike, turning it into a bright red pancake with a bell.
"Aw nuts," she sighed.
"I've got good news and bad news," said Rezzit suddenly, "which do you want first?"
TorrentBoy looked around as the city started falling apart around him.
"Good first!" he said into the Watch.
"The good news is I'm going to summon the SpeedJet to get you out of there."
"Great! So what's the bad news?"
"You've only got about ten seconds before the machine goes kablooey."
TorrentBoy gritted his teeth and slammed his fist down on the Tracker Watch.
"SpeedJet! Go!"
A bright flash shot out of the watch and in an instant, a sleek blue machine like a rocket-powered surfboard materialized in front of him. He leapt onto it, grabbed Gabby's arm, and with a quick twist of his heel, the Jet shot up into the sky!
And then — a loud boom, like a thousand bombs going off at once; and a shocking flash that burst across the rooftops until it hit the Jet and sent it into a spin.
"Hold on!" TorrentBoy yelled, trying to keep from falling off. They spun and twisted through the air, smashing into chimneys and TV satellite dishes on the way.
TorrentBoy slammed his heel down into the accelerator hard, and the Jet burst a hot flame out behind it, and whooshed further into the clouds, slowly straightening out.
Gabby was holding onto TorrentBoy tightly, her teeth chattering loudly.
"Are you scared?" he asked her, kind of mockingly.
"No, I'm cold! Can we stop flying so high?"
TorrentBoy realized they were pretty close to space. His armour protected him from the cold, so he hadn't noticed how chilly it really was.
"Oh. Uh. Sorry."
They dropped down below the clouds, and Gabby sat down on the Jet to get a better look at the world below.
"Did it explode?" she asked, pointing down at the sewage treatment plant, which didn't seem too blown up considering the shock wave that it had just burped into the sky.
TorrentBoy looked down too, and frowned.
"It doesn't look like it. Let me check my computer."
"Oh, I'm your computer now, am I? Can't even be bothered to say my name in front of your girlfriend?"
TorrentBoy gritted his teeth.
"Computer, what's the status of the machine?"
Rezzit kept quiet.
"Computer, did the machine explode?"
No answer.
"Computer-"
"Did your computer break or something?" Gabby asked, sounding worried.
"No," grumbled TorrentBoy, "it's just really dumb and sometimes I need to speak extra slow for it."
"You want me to turn off the Jet's engines right now?"
TorrentBoy sighed loudly.
"Fine. Rezzit, what happened to the machine down there?"
There was a brief moment of silence.
"What's that?" Rezzit said innocently, "What? Are you talking to me? Me, Rezzit? The one who saved your butt?"
"That's right."
"Oh, well in that case, I guess I'll answer you, you ungrateful little punk. Let's see — okay, the machine appears to be intact. I don't know what caused that explosion, but whatever it was, it didn't even dent the machine."
TorrentBoy frowned.
"What? What's wrong?" asked Gabby anxiously.
"Rezzit says the machine wasn't even scratched."
"Oh," she said, "so what does that mean?"
"It means I have to go back and blow it up properly. But first, I have to drop you back at school before-"
"Oh no!" Gabby gasped suddenly.
"What? What's wrong?"
"My friend Wesley was down there!"
TorrentBoy was shocked! Gabby was worried about him? She was scared he might have been squished into a crumbly bit of red slime by a falling building or something? This was too funny! She had a heart inside her cruel little body after all!
"I wouldn't worry about him," TorrentBoy said reassuringly.
"Oh trust me, I have to worry. If he didn't get blown up, he probably fell into the crater all by himself. He's a real klutz."
"Ha! It's funny 'cause it's true!"
"I bet he's more capable than you think," TorrentBoy sulked.
"Last year he got his foot stuck in a toilet in the girls' bathroom by mistake."
"I didn't - I mean, he did not!"
"Then why'd everyone call him Mr Soggy Shoes all year?"
"It was a friendly nickname," he sulked.
"No, his friendly nickname is 'pooperpants'."
TorrentBoy had nothing to say to that. He hadn't known about being called pooperpants, but now he understood why nobody would sit next to him in assemblies.
He was so lost in thought that he almost didn't notice Gabby nudging him.
"So what were those big creatures that attacked us? You look like you've seen them before."
"They're Proton Leeches," TorrentBoy said, trying to avoid eye contact. "They feed on Torrent energy and anyone in their path. Also, their breath smells."
"I noticed," Gabby agreed, "but why did they come after me and Wesley?"
"That's probably my fault," said Rezzit without a hint of regret, "when I gathered up all that juice to make your force field, they would have noticed the surge and come running for table scraps."
TorrentBoy nodded.
"Rezzit did something dumb," he explained to Gabby. "He says sorry."
"I do not!"
"He feels really stupid."
"In your dreams, pal!"
"He promises not to use TorrentSpace irresponsibly again."
"What's Torrent— Space?" Gabby asked hesitantly.
TorrentBoy took a moment to consider. It was a big question, and the answer was so complicated it had taken him a while to really wrap his own mind around it.
He explained to Gabby about how all people on Earth are part of a giant, interlocking network of brain energy. Each person shares a little bit of their knowledge and experience with the group - without even trying - through this mesh, so that everyone gets a little smarter.
"That's TorrentSpace," he concluded, "it's what makes us truly human. Without it, we're just — empty shells."
"And so you're around—"
"To protect TorrentSpace."
"From what? Leeches?"
"And more. You'd be surprised how many nut cases out there want to harness TorrentSpace for death rays and giant planet-busting bombs."
Gabby looked positively sick at the thought.
"Sounds like a great job."
"It's a lot of hard work," TorrentBoy agreed, "But at least I get to fly around on cool toys like this thing!"
And then, as if on cue, the SpeedJet rocked sideways, and its engines shut off in a jolt of flame.
They started dropping, and fast!
"Aw nuts," he sighed.
Down We Go
"Hold on!" shouted TorrentBoy as they smashed past the roof of a nearby building. Gabby held on as tight as she could, but just about fell off as they crashed through a tree. When they came out the other side, she had a pair of sparrows in her hair.
"Hold on!" TorrentBoy screamed.
"I already am holding on!" Gabby yelled back.
"Oh! Well — good!"
Just then, the SpeedJet dropped a little faster, and before she knew it, Gabby was flying through the air herself, screaming all the way, landing in a pile of garbage at the side of a building!
She sat up and took a banana peel off her face. The two sparrows flew away. Probably because of the smell.
"That hurt," she groaned.
She stood up, looked around, but didn't see any sign of TorrentBoy or the SpeedJet. The street was deserted in a way she'd never seen before, even when she went to school at 5AM by mistake that one time. Her left ankle was hurting — she rubbed it carefully, wincing.
"Ow —" she sighed, "better not have sprained it— I've got track and field at four—"
She dusted the trash off herself, took one last look around, and started limping off, back towards school. As she walked, she called out:
"Hello! Anybody! Where is everybody?"
Just as she rounded the corner to the school, she saw a big flock of ducks in the sky, flying north as fast as they could. She scratched her head at that.
"Where are they going in such a hurry?"
She jumped over the short fence around the school field, but her ankle didn't like the way she did it, and she tumbled down the hill to the edge of the baseball diamond. She lay there in the dust for a second, staring at the sky.
"Well," she said to herself, "at least this day couldn't get any worse—"
Just then, Wesley popped his head over hers, smirking at her.
"That's worse," she sighed.
"There you are!" Wesley said, pulling her up to her feet, "You took forever to get back here, slowpoke!"
"Excuse me?" she boomed, pushing him away, "I thought you got blown up in that — that explosion or whatever! How'd you get back here so fast?"
He shrugged, scratched the back of his head.
"I guess I'm a really fast runner!"
"I've seen you run," she said, "you're about as fast as my grandmother. When she's asleep."
"Hey!"
"Anyway, it doesn't matter. We've got to get back inside before somebody sees us out here. My mom's going to kill me if she finds out I skipped class again."
Wesley's mouth dropped open.
"You?" he said, "You skip class? Little Ms. Smarty-pants skips class? Since when?"
Gabby sighed, limped away from him.
"Last month there was a special advanced science class at the university that I really wanted to attend, but it was during school hours."
"You skipped school for more school?"
"I like learning," she grumbled.
Wesley wasn't listening anymore. He was laughing too hard. He actually laughed so hard he walked right into a fence post, but even that didn't stop him cackling.
"Will you be quiet?" Gabby hissed, "If you're not careful, we're going to get caught by -"
"The principal!" gasped Wesley, and froze in his tracks. There, just a little ahead of them, was Mr Sturgess, the principal. His funny little moustache was twitching side to side like it did when he was really angry, and his hands were fists at his sides as he walked.
"Stay calm," Wesley said, "I'll take care of this."
Mr Sturgess walked right up to them, and stopped, not looking down at them, or even in their direction. He must be really mad.
"Mr Sturgess," Wesley began, "Gabby and I were just out collecting worms for our project on — on — poetry."
"Poetry?" hissed Gabby.
"You try," Wesley hissed back.
"What Wesley means, sir," Gabby said smoothly, "is that it's a project about the poetical nature of worms, and their relation to the animal kingdom. And also how poets like Shakespeare viewed worms. With poetry."
"Nice job," Wesley observed.
"Better than you," Gabby shot back.
Wesley cleared his throat, did his best casual smile.
"So, sir," he said, "there's really no reason to get mad at us right now, because we're doing school work. Right, Gabby?"
"Golly, yes!" Gabby said with fake enthusiasm.
"So what do you say, sir?" Wesley said, smiling happily at Mr Sturgess. "Can we go back to class now?"
The principal stopped staring at the sky for a change, and his face got really confused, and he looked down at the two of them, put his arms in the air over his head, and then, with the biggest voice either of them had ever heard, yelled:
"STOP, DROP AND ROLL!"
And then he dropped onto his side and started rolling away from them!
They watched him go until he bumped into the basketball pole and got stuck.
"That's not what I was expecting," remarked Wesley.
"I think you've made him insane," said Gabby, "too many silly stories, and you've turned his brain to mush. They're probably going to take him to a padded room somewhere and feed him apple sauce up his nostrils."
Wesley thought for a moment.
"That actually sounds like fun," he said.
"You're nuts," Gabby sighed, and limped into the school.
"Hey, Rezzit," said Wesley to the watch under his breath, "are you seeing this too?"
"I am," said Rezzit, "I'm trying to figure out what's going on. But right now, I think I agree with your girlfriend. You made the principal insane."
"I keep telling you, she's not my -"
"Oh be quiet and keep up with her, will ya?"
Wesley jogged a bit and caught the door behind Gabby. Inside the school, there were no sounds. It wasn't just that there were no kids in the halls: none of the teachers in any of the classes seemed to be teaching. Nobody was sneezing. Nobody was coughing. Nobody was yawning and pretending they weren't. It was so quiet it was like somebody had sucked all the sound out of the school.
Wesley and Gabby walked carefully to their class, knocked twice on the door, and after a short pause, went inside.
Mrs Goldfield was standing facing the blackboard, not moving at all. The rest of the students were sitting with their heads down, probably reading something very important. Nobody said a word.
Wesley and Gabby slid into their seats carefully, kept looking around. It was so quiet, when Wesley's tummy gurgled, it echoed off the walls like it was the loudest thing in the history of the world.
Gabby was nervous because she didn't know what everyone else was reading, and she thought she might get in trouble for being slow. She leaned over to Marisa, the girl next to her, and poked her shoulder gently.
"Hey—" she whispered as quietly as she could, "what are we doing?"
Marisa didn't look up. She didn't even flinch.
Wesley tried the same thing to Rob, sitting across from him.
"Hey Rob," he whispered, "What's going on?"
Rob didn't move either. Wesley whacked him on the head with his ruler, but still nothing.
"We should ask Mrs Goldfield," Gabby whispered to Wesley.
"Not a chance," he replied, "we should just keep quiet."
"Come on," she said, "just ask. I can't stand the quiet."
Wesley sighed, raised his hand halfway, and cleared his throat.
"Um—" he began, "Mrs Goldfield? Gabby and I were wondering — um — what are we doing right now?"
Mrs Goldfield shook all of a sudden, stood up a bit straighter, but still kept looking at the blackboard.
"Doooooooing?" she asked, her voice long and very angry.
"Uh never mind!" Wesley said, lowering his head and glowering at Gabby.
"DOING?" Mrs Goldfield said, and turned around suddenly, her mouth watering and her eyes wide open like she had just eaten fifteen extra-spicy jalapeños. She was not herself. It was like she had become some kind of monster!
"Today we're eating brains!" she cackled.
Wesley and Gabby exchanged uncertain looks.
"All of us?" Wesley asked carefully, "Because I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian actually."
"CLASS!" Mrs Goldfield yelled at the top of her lungs, "Eat their brains!"
Suddenly, every student in the class sat up at the same time. Their mouths were twisted and watering, their eyes were wide open, and they looked like monsters too. And they were all looking straight at Wesley and Gabby!
"BRAINS!" they all screamed at the same time.
"You and your dumb ideas," Wesley sighed to Gabby as they backed away.
Pigeons
Crash had two problems.
The first problem was that the girl was not going to let him take the butterfly out of her pocket at all. He had been trying for almost fifteen minutes, but it just wasn't working.
The second problem was that the girl had started looking at him with big scary bug eyes, and was licking her lips like he was an especially delicious pizza shaped like a teddy bear.
"Brains, teddy!" she said hungrily, "Brains!"
Crash just stared at her.
"No bwains for you," he said sternly.
"Brains!"
"I don't fink you have bwains," Crash told her, "You definitewy don't act wike you do."
"BRAINS!" screamed the girl, and finally, Crash had had enough. He squirmed out of her arms, dropped on the ground, and with his quickest karate moves, snatched the butterfly out of her pocket!
The good news was, she didn't seem to care about the butterfly anymore. The bad news was, she grabbed him by the ear and started shaking him like he was a bottle of orange juice that she was about to open. At first, it was fun to be shaken like that, but after a few seconds, Crash started to feel like he was going to throw up.
"Put me down!" he yelled.
The girl stopped shaking him, looked at him with her crazy bug eyes.
"I want your brainses, teddy," she said.
"You can't have dem," Crash replied.
"I'm hungry," the girl said.
"Eat a gwapefwuit," he said, "dey've got vitamin C."
The girl seemed to be thinking about grapefruits, and Crash found that when he wriggled a bit, he was able to pull free of her chubby little fingers. He dropped to the ground and started to back away slowly, keeping careful watch on her to make sure she didn't chase him or something.
But then he noticed something odd: the girl didn't have her mommy around anymore. She was all alone, in the big city, with lots of big, scary-looking strangers all around.
Crash looked down at the butterfly in his hand, then back to the girl.
"Where's your mommy?" he asked.
The girl checked around in circles.
"Mommy brains?" she asked.
"No, not mommy bwains," sighed Crash, "Where's your mommy so you can go home and eat gwapefwuit and pwobabwy swobber on your dolls and stuff?"
The girl checked all around again, and then, in a freaky monster voice, she started to cry!
"I want my mommy!" she sobbed, "Where's my mommy? Where?"
The other people on the street were starting to look at the girl, and Crash noticed right away that they all had the same creepy eyes, and were walking like someone had knocked them over the head with bricks. They were not the kinds of people you wanted babysitting a three-year-old.
He reached over and grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled. She didn't budge, just looked at his hand, then at his face sadly.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"We're gonna find your mommy," Crash grumbled, "but first we hafta find out where dis bubberfwy hid my waser gun. I've got a feewing we're gonna need it soon."
When Crash looked back around, he saw something truly awful: the butterfly wasn't in his hand anymore! He gasped, looked left and right quickly, and only then noticed it—
— a pigeon right next to him was munching down the last bit of the butterfly's wing!
"No!" he yelled angrily, "Dumb birdie! Give it back before—"
But it was too late — the pigeon started to shake, and then it shot sparks into the air, and before Crash could react, it was glowing bright green like the butterfly had been!
"Oh super," Crash sighed as the pigeon freaked out and flew off into the sky, far, far away. He grabbed the girl's hand tighter, and they chased after as fast as they could, before anything else could go wrong!
Brains
"BRAINS!" screamed Mrs Goldfield and all the students. Wesley and Gabby were stuck in the back of the room, cornered by the windows, with only a few maps and a globe to protect themselves.
"I keep telling you," Rezzit scolded, "if you keep farting in class all the time, you're going to make enemies. NOW look what's happened!"
"Stay quiet!" Wesley hissed under his breath.
"Any great ideas?" Gabby asked, trying to keep away from the scary eyes that were walking towards her. Marisa in particular was drooling purple slime onto the floor, which was at least five different kinds of gross.
"No great ideas!" Wesley said, "Just a dumb one!"
He grabbed the globe from the table beside him, held it up over his head, and shouted as loud as he could:
"Hey everybody! I put my brain in here!"
Suddenly, all the monsters in the class looked at the globe like it was the most exciting thing in the world. They looked hungry.
"Come and get it!"
He wound back and threw the globe clear to the other side of the classroom, where it bounced off Mrs Goldfield's forehead! She toppled over backwards.
The rest of the class immediately raced after the globe, fighting each other to be able to grab it. Wesley took Gabby's hand and pulled her out into the hall, which was suddenly starting to fill up with more and more monster-looking students and teachers!
"This is bad," Wesley gulped.
"Boy, you're smart!" Gabby said, pulling him down the hall towards the stairwell.
"Guess what?" Rezzit said urgently, "I think I've got an idea what's wrong here, and you're not going to like it!"
"What?" Wesley asked as quietly as he could, so Gabby wouldn't hear.
"It looks like somehow, somebody is interrupting the TorrentSpace flow into all these people's brains. It's turning them into zombies because they don't have the juice to form their own thoughts anymore."
"Super," Wesley sighed.
"And the worst part is — whatever's messing with their brains is also cutting back on how much power I can pull together for TorrentBoy. So you might have to take care of things without me for a bit."
"I'll do my best," Wesley said.
"What?" asked Gabby, turning around.
"Oh. Nothing," covered Wesley, "which way are we going now?"
The zombies in the hall were starting to notice them. Gabby looked down the stairs, then back at Wesley.
"I think we should get out of the school. I don't live far from here. Maybe my mom can help us figure something out."
"Sounds like a plan!" Wesley nodded, and started down the stairs. But he stopped very suddenly when he saw: at least fifty more zombies coming up the stairs, right at them!
"Bad plan! Very bad plan!" Wesley squeaked, and ran back up to the hall.
Just then, the door to their class burst open, and the globe bounced along the ground. A second later, Marisa leapt straight out of the class and landed on top of the globe so hard it became extremely flat.
Marisa looked down at the crumpled paper with her crazy, crazy eyes, and then frowned.
"Is not brains!" she cried, "Is Guatemala!"
The classroom erupted with a dozen angry groans. More students poured into the hall, all gathering around Marisa and the globe. And then, Rob caught sight of Wesley and Gabby.
"THERE brains!" he shouted, and all the other zombies looked up too.
"Time to go," Wesley said, and pulled Gabby up the stairs as fast as he could. There were no more floors to the school, so there were no more zombies ahead of them — but they could hear the rest of the school starting to follow them up. They were going to be trapped!
At the very top of the stairs, there was a big heavy door with a red sign on it that said: "EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY."
Gabby held Wesley back.
"Wait a second!" she gasped, "That's for emergencies only!"
Wesley stared at her really hard.
"Are you kidding me?" he shrieked, "This is an emergency!"
"BRAINS COME BACK!" screamed all the zombies behind them.
"We don't have time!" Wesley said, and pushed on the door.
And it didn't open.
"No!" Wesley yelled, "Emergency! Hello, Emergency Door! This is an emergency! Open!"
The door wouldn't budge.
"Help me out here!" Wesley yelled to Gabby, and she started pushing on the door too, pushing with all her strength.
Behind them, the first of the zombies came around the corner, eyes wide and crazy, and they started laughing an insane laugh as they stumbled up the steps towards Wesley and Gabby.
"Come on!" Wesley screamed, pushing so hard his arms nearly popped out of their sockets — and then finally, the door creaked open just a bit.
"That's it!" yelled Gabby, "Push harder!"
They leaned into it with everything they had, and slowly the door opened wider — wider — they looked at the opening, then to each other—
"Almost there!" Gabby grunted, and one of the zombies started to grab at her shoes!
"Let's GO!" Wesley yelled, and they threw themselves through the tiny crack in the door! And with a loud KER-THUMP, the door crunched shut again!
The top zombie looked to the next zombie and shrugged.
"Is emergency?" he asked.
Outside, on the roof, Wesley got himself to his feet, dusting off his pants. Gabby was already up, listening at the door.
"What are they doing?" Wesley asked.