The Great Brain Page 4

  So, meat. Grimsweather had a very precise notion of the quality of steaks he was after and sometimes did a bit of personal ‘tweaking’ of the test results of appetising looking candidates. If a student fell into his preferred barbeque menu criteria – plump, fleshy and heaps savoury looking – Grimsweather would doctor the exam results, rendering the student last in the line-up and first on the fryer.

  And that’s why Mick Living-Dead had survived all these years. He was as thin as a whippet and bonier than a flying fish, with barely a skerrick of meat on his decomposing body. So it was that maths geniuses like ‘Fat’ Matt Cow-Creature and healthy, free-range students like Vincent Chicken-Experiment never exited the classroom the same way they entered it.

  But Mick did. Mick may have scored dead last in the exam every year, but Grimsweather knew he couldn’t feed his pet canary on Mick’s corpse. So young Living-Dead came and went as he pleased, oblivious to the proximity of the meat cleaver to his empty head. At least he proved one proverb is true: ignorance is bliss.

  And there was no one in the world more blissed out than Mick Living-Dead.

  So, the maths test. This year it was a doozy. See, apart from trapping himself a couple of meat-tray stiffs for his barbeque, Grimsweather also enjoyed the generally destabilising effect of setting impossible exams. The students would wince in pain, gnash their teeth, weep softly onto their calculators and writhe in agony at their own ineptitude, all of which pleased the malignant Grimsweather no end.

  He dug it.

  Grimsweather was another sadist, his thing was killer maths tests, and his family reunion maths test was always the worst of the year.

  Mick sat at the back of the classroom wearing a big Rastafarian beanie and a thick grin. The thick grin was a clever ploy to conceal Mick’s sudden lack-of-thickness and the beanie was to conceal Albert Einstein’s brain – nestled on top of Mick’s head like a big, quivering, pink jelly.

  Feral.

  The beanie was a stroke of genius. It not only obscured the extra brain nestled atop Mick’s own useless one, but it also covered the jumper leads clamped to his ears forming the electrical conduit to Einstein’s brain.

  Grimsweather slowly passed the exam papers out, grinning evilly. Mick took his and quickly leafed through it. Even as he was reading and turning the pages with one hand, his other hand was scrawling answers down the paper. By the time Mick’s eyes had finished reading through the questions, his hand had written all the answers.

  And, since Mick normally had no idea what 2 plus 2 equalled, he was in no position to judge how his surrogate brain had performed on the test. But, since time is money, there was no point in sitting around once he’d completed the paper. He stood, traipsed up the front to Grimsweather’s desk, dropped the completed exam on it and marched out of the classroom.

  Grimsweather was gaping as he watched the zombie student exit. Living-Dead never even completed his exams, let alone completed them first. Then the Rollcall Master began to mark the exam paper, and the gape got gapier. Grimsweather couldn’t believe it. Living-Dead had not only finished first, he also scored first, with 100 per cent correct.

  Unprecedented.

  The brain worked. This was proper cool. Now the Living-Dead siblings would strike a blow for all students of Horror High, ridding it of the despicable Mr Noel.

  See what you can achieve when you cooperate? See what you can accomplish when you illegally break into museums and steal precious and irreplaceable brains? See what a tool a zombie kid looks in a Rastafarian hat?

  Are we learning yet?

  So. The deal was done. The stage was set. The trap was baited. Now all they had to do was spring it.

  Mick fronted up to Mr Noel’s office and tapped on the door.

  ‘Entre vous,’ trilled the insufferable teacher.

  Mick found the teacher sitting at his desk with his nose in a book. Mr Know-All glanced up and sniffed.

  ‘Living-Dead. What do you want?’ sneered the teacher. ‘Come to back out of the bet?’

  ‘No,’ replied Mick, grinning coolly. ‘I’ve come to set the time and place. I assume, since I challenged you, I can decide when and where it happens?’

  Mr Know-All nodded his assent.

  ‘Well, it’s tonight, at the school auditorium. 7.15 p.m. for a 7.30 kick-off. Capiche?’

  ‘Capiche,’ Mr Know-All replied, and this time there was just a trace of panic in his voice. What was going on here? Why was Living-Dead suddenly so confident?

  Who Wants to Be a Horror Millionaire started at 7.30 p.m., so Kim and Mick began their preparations at 6.30. One very important aspect of the prep was sidelining their old man. He definitely had to be out of the way when the deal went down, or there’d be chaos and disaster.

  See, Mr Living-Dead was one of nature’s gentlemen and a true sportsman. He valued competition for competition’s sake, regardless of who won, and believed it was how you played the game that decided the essential integrity and quality of your character.

  It was enough to make you yack.

  Problem was, his kids were about to embark on a strategy that involved the one thing he despised above all else. Mr Living-Dead hated cheats and cheating and cheatery and cheaters, refused to eat Cheetos just because of their name and always barracked for the gazelle against the cheetah in animal documentaries. He was so down on cheats he was up.

  And he wasn’t about to sit around and watch his kids cheat to win a bet, no matter how important the outcome. So they had to make sure he wasn’t sitting around at all …

  Mr Living-Dead had his feet up, watching the box in the dying room, rubbing his forehead distractedly and trying to relax. There wasn’t much chance of that. The news bulletin on the TV brought universally rotten news of the deadly meteor – now thousands of kilometres closer than before – and the Horror space station’s laughably unsuccessful efforts to avert its fiery path of destruction.

  To add to the relentlessly shabby outlook for humanity’s future, there’d been a massive plunge in the Horror Share-market. It was the third bit of bad luck, and calamities come in threes (just like I told you). Plus Mr Living-Dead himself had suffered a crap day at work; his boss was a total nimrod and his rubbish car had broken down again on the way home.

  Kim approached her father and, as he looked up into her face, she smiled and handed him an egg carton. He took it silently, but the unasked question played quizzically across his face. By the feel of it he instantly knew the carton was full and by the smell of it instantly knew it was full of eggs that could’ve honestly described themselves as fresh and wholesome about eighteen months ago.

  But definitely not now.

  Kim handed him a grainy printout of a digital photo. The photo was of an obviously distressed vampire tied to a telegraph pole. The vampire’s face was familiar. He was dressed like a used car salesman, and the backdrop of the photo looked like Horror Discount Motor Mart.

  ‘Isn’t that … ?’ Mr Living-Dead started to say.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Kim. ‘And this photo was taken five minutes ago. We’ve just tied him up and he’s all yours, Dad. Happy Father’s Day.’

  ‘But Father’s Day isn’t until next week,’ said Mr Living-Dead.

  ‘I know. But we found out through the salesman’s kids at school that they’re going on a fortnight’s vacation tomorrow. Probably funded by the money you gave them for that junk-yard car.’

  ‘Thanks, kids,’ growled Mr Living-Dead as he hauled himself out of the sofa. ‘Thanks heaps.’ And with that, nature’s finest gentleman departed to take his stinky revenge on the dodgy used car salesman vampire.

  Stage one satisfactorily completed.

  That left Mick and Kim a free hand to complete their nefarious business. They headed up the stairs to Mick’s room to hook up the mega-knowledgeable contents of the esky to Mick’s mega-festy ears via the jump-start leads.

  When they’d climbed the stairs, they noticed the bedroom door open and a slurping noise coming from inside. Th
ey pushed through the door and stared. Scattered wall to wall were weird strands of pink confetti, grey tube pasta and skanky sausage meat. They were just in time to see their pet dog, Biter, ripping and tearing into the last lumpy scraps of Albert Einstein’s brain.

  Disaster!

  They were doomed. Mick sank to his knees, head in his hands. He felt like crying. Now they’d never be rid of Mr Noel.

  But Kim’s head was racing, scrambling over some obscure fact they’d read on the Albert Einstein webpage. ‘Mick. Get up. I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘What?’ Mick whimpered. ‘Run away? Join the circus? Get nightshift work in a wig factory?’

  ‘No! Think,’ she said. ‘I just remembered something from the Einstein website – humans only use 10 per cent of their brains.’ She held up a portion of the grisly remains of the lump they’d wrestled out of Biter’s mouth. ‘Well, here’s 10 per cent. Let’s plug this in and see if it works. It’s our only chance. We’ve got nothing to lose.’

  Mick jumped to his feet. ‘Good idea. Let’s try it.’

  It was a good idea, and I’m an authority on these things, because I’ve had billions. Ten billion and three at last count, actually.

  Don’t be telling me about good ideas.

  They attached the jumper leads to the lumpy remnant and then to Mick’s head. ‘Ask me a question,’ said Mick. ‘Make it difficult.’

  ‘All questions are difficult for you, Mick,’ Kim replied archly. ‘What’s the square root of seventy-seven?’

  ‘Ludwig van Beethoven?’ answered Mick. ‘The Beatles? Puff Daddy? Abba? Snoop Dogg?’

  ‘What?’ said Kim. ‘What kind of answer is that?’

  ‘I dunno,’ replied Mick. ‘That’s what came into my head. Ask me another.’

  ‘Okay. What’s the capital of Latvia?’

  ‘Nick Cave,’ replied Mick, ‘Dr Dre and Kylie Minogue. Rolf Harris.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Kim. ‘This isn’t working at all. We must have the wrong bit of brain. This must be the section concerned with musical accomplishments – and Rolf Harris. Quick, we’ve gotta find the bit that’s smart, not musical.’

  Mick grabbed a handful of the chewed, grey mush covered in dog gozz and pressed it into a queasy ball. ‘Here, try this bit. Quick!’

  They plugged it in and Kim asked, ‘How many colours in a rainbow?’

  ‘Seven,’ Mick answered. ‘Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.’

  Kim looked at Mick. ‘Does that sound right? Did you know that one already?’

  Mick shrugged.

  ‘What am I saying? You don’t know anything already,’ Kim stated, checking her watch. ‘C’mon. We’ve got no choice. We’re way late. We’ve got to risk it …’

  Kim Living-Dead was as bright as her brother was dim – if that’s possible. She knew Mr Noel would renege on the bet if the outcome was decided in a private venue, like her house. She knew what would happen if they beat him with no witnesses: Mr Noel would swear on his evil, pestilential black heart that it never happened, God honest, to save his reputation and his job. He would back out of the bet, welsh out something scandalous, and – being a long-serving member of the teaching staff at Horror High – get away with it.

  Unjust.

  That wasn’t going to happen. Kim was not only smart, she was well-connected too. I don’t mean having friends in the Mafia, being fully mobbed-up or having savage criminal associates – it was stacks more hard-core than that. She knew people in television. And the people she knew in television made things happen. Kim flicked a few emails through to her ‘contacts’ and, quick as a heart attack, she’d organised the final Living-Dead intelligence bet to be staged on TV, hosted by Freddie Quagmire as a Who Wants to Be a Horror Millionaire live spot.

  Kim didn’t have to do much convincing: the television wonks knew it would be a ratings winner. Fact is, with Mr Noel well known (and well hated) across Horror, it’d be a ratings killer.

  Kim’s dad never missed Horror Millionaire, but tonight he was out egging a used-car salesman back to the Path of Righteousness. The coast was clear.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I bid you welcome to a showdown between two intellectual titans, representing both ends of the spectrum. We’re broadcasting to you tonight from Horror High, where the overly brained and underly charming maths teacher, Mr Cornelius Noel, will rumble head-to-head with the little-known and infinitesimally brained Mick Living-Dead.

  ‘Ladies and germs, I don’t need to tell you what’s at stake here. More than winning a million, which, let’s face it folks, scarcely buys you a loaf of bread and a tank of petrol these days. No, tonight we’ve got something real at stake. Mick Living-Dead has ponied up $2,500, eked from a year’s slavery to McHorrors, where he was casually burgered on a daily basis. And Mr Noel? Mr Noel has … ladies and gerbils, Mr Noel has … oh, I can hardly say it from excitement … Mr Noel has promised to resign!’

  The crowd went mental!

  A monster line-up at the back of the Horror High theatrette started stomping the floorboards, and a front-seat conga line of leprositic zombies juggled and danced, limbs, fingers and ears shaking loose all over the shop. The cheering, clapping and catcalling went on for a considerable time.

  Freddie Quagmire gave a smarmy smile, running his fingers through his oily hair, biding his time. He paused dramatically. This man knew how to play a crowd. Timing was everything.

  ‘Yes, he’ll quit,’ he repeated, and grinned broadly, swallowing another long pause. ‘And we all know what that means …’

  Pandemonium from the crowd.

  ‘So, without further ado, I give you the contestants in this epic struggle … the massively misinformed Mick Living-Dead!’

  The crowd clapped and whistled crazily.

  ‘And misanthropic maths master, Mr Cornelius Noel!’

  Complete silence. Crickets could be heard chirruping outside.

  Freddie Quagmire wiped his brow. ‘Whew,’ he goofed into the microphone, ‘tough crowd.’

  ‘Correct. Question nine: Who wrote War and Peace?’

  Freddie grinned into the camera, looking like a grown-up version of Eddie Munster with a bad haircut and a crippling hot-dog habit.

  The competition between Mick and Mr Noel was cranking up, and the score was nine all.

  Yes! The lump of chewed-up brain was working.

  Mr Noel was sweating. He didn’t suspect a thing and was totally gob-smacked that the zombie kid could answer anything.

  ‘Tolstoy,’ answered Mr Noel. ‘Tolstoy wrote War and Peace.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Freddie Quagmire, ‘but I need a full name.’

  ‘Nigel Tolstoy,’ said Mr Noel with immense self-satisfaction at his uncompromising smartypantsness.

  ‘Leo Tolstoy,’ corrected Mick, winking at Kim, who sat just out of the television camera angle.

  ‘Sorry,’ replied Freddie Quagmire, bowing slightly to Mr Noel. ‘Mick’s correct. It was Leo Tolstoy.’

  The crowd howled for blood.

  Then, right on cue, the final killer question …

  Mr Know-All was in trouble, for the first time ever. Unless he answered the last question correctly and Mick got it wrong, he’d lose his job.

  But, as we all know, Mick was born wrong.

  Like most things in this type of demeaning, gutter-level literature, the above chapter heading is as misleading as the crapulent excuses I get from the publisher’s paymaster when I ask them exactly which country my pay cheques have been sent to this week. The only truly unlucky thing about this chapter is the publisher’s dodgy chapter numbering machine, which has obviously just jumped from 10 to 13. What kind of operation are they running here?

  Even Mick could count to 13.

  Ignore the chapter title; forget number 13. That’s another shoddy proverb we’re going to burn to the ground before this gig is up. Everything turned out fine for Mick, though I’m still waiting for my cheque to return from some postal shack in an obscure one-h
orse town in Inner Mongolia.

  I had planned to take this story out with a flourish, bring in some famous names – some A-list celebs – to pen the final chapter, lift it out of the mud and kick it into touch with a big finish. But when I started ringing around they all hung up on me, and nobody returned my calls when I left a message. Mustn’t have realised who was calling.

  It was well odd.

  And now it was too late for the celebrity big finish – they missed their chance.

  Freddie Quagmire was about to ask the last question on Who Wants to Be a Horror Millionaire. The last chance for Mick to get shot of Mr Noel. The last opportunity for any kid at Horror High to be free of the pompous, puritanical, pugilistic professor. The last time I’m gonna mention ‘last’ in this paragraph. Or maybe the second last – I haven’t decided yet. See, repetition is widely acknowledged as a useful tool for building tension in quality literature, and even works in seedy books like this.

  And you’ll see it’s worked. Tension? I’m as tense as a camel with a styrofoam hump, and I don’t even care about the outcome of the Know-All/Living-Dead intelligence contest, so imagine how they felt.

  ‘Okay,’ said the Millionaire host. ‘Last question. What was Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?’

  ‘E=mc2,’ barked Mr Noel confidently.

  ‘The most annoying relatives stay the longest,’ answered Mick.

  Freddie Quagmire paused over the answer card, grinning, as the tension became unbearable. ‘I’m afraid Mr Noel’s answer is incorrect. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states that the most annoying relatives stay the longest. Thank you and goodnight!’

  Yes! They’d won!

  Mr Noel had a face like a bashed crab. He shook his head slowly and turned to face the jeering crowd, in total shock. He couldn’t believe it. Slowly, as though in a dream-state, he turned to face Mick and mumbled, ‘You beat me. You win.’