The Great Brain Page 5

  The crowd went postal! Shouting, cheering, weeping, howling (at least from the werewolves).

  Mr Noel stumbled off the stage and into the night.

  Next morning Mrs Living-Dead turned the TV on to catch the morning news, and a special update flashed across the screen. The monstrous deadly meteor was still heading towards Horror at top speed, closer every second, and seemed certain to collide with their planet.

  Everyone was freaking. The world’s top scientists met to discuss a strategy. They couldn’t agree what to do and squabbled over small details, like who sat near the heater and who got to eat what colour Smarties. After much bickering and a girly, slappy ‘fistfight’ between Professor Dannzig and Professor Doglily – long-time rivals – they finally decided to consult the smartest scientist and smartest brain of all time.

  Albert Einstein’s brain.

  They’d agreed the best thing to do was travel to Horror to the Brains Wing of the Horror Museum and ask Albert Einstein’s brain for an answer.

  ‘Uh oh,’ said Mick, watching the news broadcast from the breakfast table.

  ‘Cripes,’ added Kim.

  The Living-Dead kids had left a substitute brain when they’d stolen Albert Einstein’s real grey matter. Mick had decided against leaving a frozen brain pilfered from out of his Mum’s deep freeze. He thought that was too easy.

  No, Mick had to do something cool, the jackass. He should’ve left the cool stuff to me. He had a great idea, or so he’d thought. It wasn’t great at all. The only thing Mick could unearth as a substitute brain instead of the frozen one came from a dead rat he retrieved from the garbage bin across the street.

  Mick had cracked open the rat’s skull, pried its brain out with a fork and plugged his bike pump into the greasy grey mess. Then he pumped it up with air to the size of a human brain and tied it off with a rubber band.

  Now Mick watched the TV report in silence as the scientists prepared to consult the brain, which was wired up with electrodes. The boss scientist – the one with the maddest frizzy haircut and thickest nerd glasses – spoke into a microphone, directly to the brain.

  ‘Mr Einstein, sir, we need your help. A meteor is heading straight for Horror and we need to know what to do. We’re all going to die. Can you suggest a possible solution?’

  The answer came back immediately. ‘Cheese,’ the brain replied calmly.

  ‘Pardon?’ asked the lab dude.

  ‘Cheese,’ the brain repeated.

  ‘Cheese?’ murmured the group of scientists.

  ‘Cheese,’ the rat brain said again. ‘Cheese, cheese, cheese.’

  ‘Okay,’ the head scientist said. ‘If you say so …’

  That night the scientists fired an enormous ball of mondo sticky cheese at the rapidly approaching meteor. The humungous, yellow blob wobbled and spun through the atmosphere at the speed of sound, powered with rockets, guided with satellite technology and mildly flavoured with garlic and garden herbs.

  The cheese hit the deadly meteor with an enormous splat, fully clogging its craters, goo-ing it up and slinging the meteor out of its orbit. Amazingly, it stuck to another passing planet like a snot ball sticking to a hanky, shooting off into a deep, dark pocket of space, never to be seen again.

  And the Earth was saved, thanks to Albert Einstein’s brain.

  No, scratch that. The real Albert Einstein brain had gone heaps festy after Biter had chewed it up, and Mick had thrown it on the compost heap. The soil from the compost heap would grow brainy vegetables for years to come. Indeed, some very succulent, remarkably well-informed water-melons and tomatoes would grow in the compost of Albert Einstein’s brain, but the Earth was actually saved thanks to some anonymous rat’s brain and the legendary genius of that undoubtedly intelligent superzombie, Mick Living-Dead.

  Obviously Horror High went ballistic with joyfulness and errant celebration when it heard the outcome of the intelligence bet. Some rascal kids broke into the belfry and started ringing the huge brass bells, scaring the bats up there half to death and causing the Horror Fire Department to go into meltdown mode thinking it was World War III.

  At the Living-Dead house they were celebrating too, and they had much to celebrate. Mr Living-Dead had egged the rip-off used car salesman vampire back to the Stone Age. The poor man had crawled off his dodgy car lot honking of sulphuric egg fumes and crying like a stinky little girl. Mick had won his intelligence bet and rid the school of Mr Know-All. And the meteor had been cheesed off course to cause grief and havoc on another planet, but not ours.

  And it was Mick’s birthday.

  Kim doused the lights as Mrs Living-Dead made a triumphant entrance from the kitchen with a special surprise for Mick, who sat expectantly at the dinner table. It was a big pink blob punctured with multiple candles, the lights of which highlighted the glow of simple pleasure on Mick’s face. It’d have to be a simple expression to be on Mick’s face.

  Dinner was served.

  The birthday brain was fresh and plump and brainy. It had been caught fresh. When Mr Noel announced his resignation from Horror High, two things happened. The students went berserk with elation, and Mr Noel’s teacher immunity clause immediately expired.

  That meant he was fair game.

  He’d only taken three steps out of the gothic school gates when he was suddenly set upon by Mrs Living-Dead. It was a short, one-sided struggle.

  Now Mick was presented with the tasty treat, a symbol of all his hard work and success. He blew the candles out and, with a drooly grin, set about methodically devouring Mr Noel’s brain, the ingestion of which transformed Mick into a world class academic genius overnight.

  Extraordinary.

  And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

  Paul Stafford is an author and literacy consultant, specialising in reluctant male readers and writers, and works in schools across Australia. He founded and heads the award-winning Dead Bones Society, an all-boys writing lab operating out of the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum after closing time. His latest book, You’re History, Mate!, tells the stories of the dingbats, dropkicks, dills, duds and disasters in Australian history.

  He lives on a farm outside Bathurst with his wife, Catarina, and daughter, Matilda.

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  Two champions, two destinies … Revenge will be sweet.

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