would allow. Brendan stayed near the mausoleum since it provided protection on at least one side as more zombies began showing up.
Eventually, he climbed up the three stairs on the mausoleum. He looked around and then promptly dropped the zombie arm he’d been using as his weapon. From his new vantage point, he finally saw just how hopeless his situation had become.
The sea of zombies spread out around the mausoleum had grown to rock-concert proportions. If he weren’t feeling so hopeless, he might have even performed the Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days” that had saved him back in Emperor Occipus’s Colosseum.
But, instead, he slumped against the ornate bronze doors and waited for the zombies to devour him.
Fat Jagger came bounding into Fernwood Cemetery still dripping wet from the ocean water he’d been soaking in for the past ten hours. His mouth was open just enough for Cordelia and Eleanor to see outside so they could direct his movements. He’d been careful to avoid smashing any houses on the short walk there, just as Cordelia had instructed. But now, inside the cemetery, he was crushing people with each step.
“Oh, no!” Eleanor gasped. “He’s smooshing all those people! Wait … what are they all doing in a cemetery at three in the morning?”
“Those aren’t ordinary people, Nell,” Cordelia said, straining to see over Fat Jagger’s huge lower lip. “I think they’re … zombies!”
“But zombies aren’t real!” Eleanor said. “That’s impossible.”
“So is a colossus with two kids in his mouth walking around Mill Valley, California!” Cordelia reminded her.
Eleanor was about to admit that Cordelia made a good point, but was distracted by shouting somewhere far below them.
“Down here!” the tiny voice yelled. “Jagger, down here!”
“It’s Brendan!” Eleanor yelled, pointing to their left. “Fat Jagger, can you see Brendan down there? He’s in trouble! Save him!”
They saw Brendan on the landing of a white marble mausoleum, jumping up and down hysterically. There were hundreds of zombies closing in around him.
Fat Jagger closed his mouth to keep Cordelia and Eleanor from falling out and then reached down and pulled the entire mausoleum from the ground. Brendan clung desperately to one of the marble pillars. The bronze doors had burst off from the force of Jagger’s grip. The roof of the mausoleum crumbled.
Fat Jagger opened his mouth wide and shook the mausoleum over it like a box of sweets, dumping a screaming Brendan inside. Then Jagger closed his mouth and turned back towards the ocean.
A SFPD helicopter suddenly hovered down into view from the clouds above the giant. A man in a blue SWAT uniform sat inside the open door of the chopper. He raised a huge rocket launcher, pointed it at Fat Jagger, and pulled the trigger.
Brendan fell into Fat Jagger’s mouth, not having any idea why his friend would eat him. Maybe Fat Jagger had become a colossus zombie himself?
In spite of the dizzying headache gnawing at the back of his skull, it didn’t take Brendan long to figure out that Fat Jagger had never intended to swallow him, even. Part of it was the fact that he was still in the giant’s mouth, sitting in a pool of gooey saliva on a massive tongue. The other clue was the arms of his sisters wrapped around him.
“Brendan, you’re alive!” Eleanor said.
“Did it work, did you manage to talk to Denver Kristoff?” Cordelia asked, getting right down to business.
Before Brendan could answer, the sound of a helicopter outside interrupted their reunion. Brendan had never heard a real rocket launcher being fired before, but he’d played enough video games to recognise the sound right before they were all tossed around inside Fat Jagger’s mouth from the impact, like toddlers in a bouncy castle.
Fat Jagger bellowed in pain. In the split second that his mouth was open, the Walkers saw a gaping and bloody hole in the colossus’s left shoulder.
“They’re going to kill him!” Eleanor shrieked. “Jagger, get back to the bay! You need to hide!”
Cordelia screamed too, but for an entirely different reason. Rising up slowly behind Brendan … was the Storm King!
It wasn’t a spirit version of the Storm King. It was the real flesh-and-blood version. That much was obvious as they jostled and bounced inside Fat Jagger’s mouth as he ran back towards the bay.
Brendan spun around, yelped, and then quickly scampered over to Cordelia and Eleanor.
Fat Jagger dived back into the water, shaking his four passengers together like dice in a cup. Once the colossus was smoothly swimming through the bay and his mouth was settled, the Storm King climbed slowly to his feet again with a loud groan.
The Walkers scrambled away from him; towards Fat Jagger’s right molars. Their mobile phone flashlights cast an eerie glow on to Denver Kristoff’s rotting face.
“Denver?” Cordelia ventured. “I know we’re not exactly best friends or anything … but we really need your help.”
The Storm King had never looked worse. His normally putrid face was even more hideous than usual. If it weren’t for a few greenish flaps of rancid flesh clinging to his head, he would have basically just been a skull with hair.
The Storm King finally opened his mouth to reply.
“Graaanghhhhh!” the Storm King moaned. “Brrrraaaaoooohhhhrrrr!”
“Um, what?” Cordelia said.
“Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I accidentally started the zombie apocalypse?” Brendan said.
“What are you talking about?” Cordelia asked.
“The spell did bring Kristoff back from the dead,” Brendan explained. “But it also turned his corpse into a zombie, along with the rest of the cemetery’s inhabitants. I must have used the wrong inflections or something …”
“Are you kidding me? Now what are we going to do?” Cordelia asked, panicking. “He was our only way out of this!”
“Let’s start by making sure no one else gets bitten,” Brendan said, standing up.
He’d watched enough zombie movies to know that they moved pretty slowly – plus, he’d already been bitten so he wasn’t nearly as afraid to attack a zombie unarmed as he normally would have been.
Brendan charged at zombie Denver and slammed his shoulder into the old dead guy’s chest. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen – he considered for a moment that the decrepit old man might simply explode from the force. But zombie Denver didn’t explode. Instead, the old man went flying backwards into a row of Fat Jagger’s molars, a low moan escaping his green lips as he slammed into the teeth with enough force to cause Cordelia and Eleanor to look away.
Brendan tensed, waiting for the old man to get back up again. But he didn’t.