My Zombie Hamster Read Online Free PDF Page A

I tried to point out to her that it was hard to give zombies their freedom when all they really wanted to do was leap for your throat, she told me it was an
internal
liberation.
    Then she punched me in the arm.
    We put on our deadbeat defense uniforms. Charlie had a hockey goalkeeper outfit. I was a bit jealous of that, especially when I pulled on my mom’s boots and Charlie laughed and headed out into the backyard.
    We spent ages searching for any sign of Anti-Snuffles (I refuse to call him Auntie Snuffles), but couldn’t find anything. I even got my Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass to check for footprints, but the ground was frozen solid.
    Charlie eventually got bored and went home to play Runespell against Calvin and Aren.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3
    Had to come up with a plan. I couldn’t let Mom or Dad find out about Snuffles. I mean, that’s obvious. First, I’d get into trouble because I let the hamster die, even though it wasn’t my fault, and second, Dad would get into serious trouble (from Mom and from the authorities) for buying a pet without the proper paperwork. So I took Katie to the local Toys ᴙ Us. (I had to take her with me. What if I’d been spotted buying what I wanted to buy? My already shaky street cred would have gone up in smoke.)
    Of course, getting Katie there in the first place wasn’t exactly easy. When I went upstairs to ask her, she was playing with her Cally and Edwarddolls, the ones she got for Christmas, pushing them in Cally’s pink car. But as I watched she rammed the car full speed into her new dollhouse. Cally’s head flew from her shoulders, and an explosion of red burst from the headless doll, splattering up everywhere. Tomato sauce. I hoped.
    Edward was flung from the car as well. Katie made him crawl across the carpet and propped him up against the dollhouse with Cally’s plastic head in his lap.
    “Oh, Cally,” said Katie in her Edward voice, “this is all my fault. If only I had a brain instead of good looks, I would have told you to put your safety belt on. But my brain is the size of a walnut, and now all I’ve got left is your head.”
    Katie then put on her Cally voice. “Oh, Edward. Did you realize that the human brain can still function for up to three minutes after decapitation? Kiss me, my love. Let my last sight be your beautiful but stupid lips.”
    She then switched to her Edward voice again. “Eew, gross, Cally. Anyway, I was bringing you here to break up with you. I’m seeing your sister Sally. So this all worked out really well for me. Ha-ha-ha.”
    Cally voice: “Foiled again! It serves me right for not paying attention in school and relying on my good looks to get me through life. If only—
eurgh
.”
    Edward voice: “Good. Now she is dead. Perhaps a bear will eat her, and I won’t even have to bother with a funeral.”
    It was at this point I closed my wide-open mouth and interrupted her, asking her to come with me. She agreed, but only if I bought her a Wednesday Addams doll.
    A small price to pay to keep from being found out, I’m sure you’ll agree.
    So I’ve kept up the suspense long enough. I bet you’re wondering what I bought. I went down there planning on buying a small remote-control dog, or a hamster or a guinea pig. Anything that I could bury in the sawdust and activate whenever Mom came near. My thinking was that I could move it around in the sawdust so she thought he was still alive.
    I found something even better. Okay, it’s a kitten, but a kitten that activates whenever someone comes close to it. Some kind of infrared sensor or something. I had to take out its voice box, though,seeing as it meowed and purred every time you walked past it.
    (Katie walked in on me doing that. A knife poised above the toy’s throat. She stared at me for a while, then nodded and said, “I approve, big brother. Carry on.”)
    But it’s all set up perfectly now. I’ve put the cage in the corner of my room, by the top of my bed. No one needs to go near