Alex Neptune, Zombie Fighter, page 1
Things are about to get seriously spooky for Alex Neptune in his fourth action-packed adventure – perfect for fans of Percy Jackson and Dragon Realm!
When a creepy fog rolls into Haven Bay, Alex, Zoey and Anil are ambushed by terrifying crab-riding zombies, controlled by the evil spirit of Brineblood the pirate.
The only weapon that can stop Brineblood’s zombie army is a powerful trident – but it’s been broken into three pieces. Alex, Zoey and Anil must enter three deadly worlds that have been magically trapped in bottles to retrieve the hidden pieces, all before the zombies can catch them. But with some penguins, an octopus and a frozen dragon on their side, how can they go wrong?
For all the amazing, terrifying creatures living in the depths of the ocean
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE BOOK
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE: ALEX NEPTUNE, MAGIC TEACHER
CHAPTER TWO: GHOST TOWN
CHAPTER THREE: FOGGY ON THE DETAILS
CHAPTER FOUR: MONSTERS, MYSTERY AND UNHELPFUL OLD MEN
CHAPTER FIVE: MEET YOUR MONSTER
CHAPTER SIX: SUPERSTITIOUS PRECAUTIONS
CHAPTER SEVEN: ABSOLUTELY CRAB-ULOUS
CHAPTER EIGHT: RIDERS ON THE SWARM
CHAPTER NINE: THE FROZEN DRAGON
CHAPTER TEN: ZOMBIE FIGHTERS
CHAPTER ELEVEN: ALL BOTTLED UP
CHAPTER TWELVE: SORRY, NO DINOSAURS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: PICK UP A PENGUIN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A REPERTOIRE OF DISASTERS
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CRAB LADS, LADS, LADS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A FLOOD OF EVIL
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: MONSTERS AGAIN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: BIG AND BAD
CHAPTER NINETEEN: QUEEN OF THE FLOOD
CHAPTER TWENTY: WISH YOU WERE HERE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A FORSAKEN TOWN
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE END OF DRAGONS
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: HOME AWAY FROM HOME
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: ICE TO SEE YOU
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: DEFROSTED DRAGON
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: WELCOME HOME
COPYRIGHT PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
ALEX NEPTUNE, MAGIC TEACHER
The ocean no longer wanted Alex Neptune to die, but he was beginning to wonder if his friends did instead.
A mammoth wave cast a dark shadow over their rowing boat, frothing and spitting as it rose, ready to swamp the tiny wooden craft. Zoey Wu swiped her fringe clear of her eyes and faced it defiantly. She crouched at the front of the boat, one hand trailing in the churning ocean, the other raised to tame the rebellious water. The wave strained against her control like a great white shark on a dog lead.
“Remember what I said about summoning waves to face away from you?” Alex said.
Zoey gritted her teeth as she fought to restrain the water. “It’s not my fault I’m too good at stupid sea magic!”
The towering strength of her summoned wave was no real surprise. Alex had quickly learned that if he asked Zoey to conjure a puddle, she was more likely to deliver a flood.
His friend was right – it was his fault she was struggling to control her magic. Alex was supposed to be teaching her to do exactly that. The problem was, no matter how hard he tried, he didn’t really know how.
“Use your power to direct the wave away from us,” Alex instructed gently, trying again. “Remember, your magic is a natural connection to the sea. Don’t try and force it – guide the water.”
“Should I start rowing away?” asked Anil Chatterjee, gripping the oars tightly from his seat in the middle of the boat. “Maybe very fast?”
“No, I can do this!” Zoey nodded confirmation to herself and stuck her tongue between her teeth. Then she lashed her raised hand sideways as if trying to swat a fly. Alex felt her sea magic surge, a flare of power that made him stagger.
The wave responded by twisting around on the spot to face away from the boat.
“Yes!” Zoey cheered.
Reeling dizzily, the wave kept turning, coiling around itself like a rope. Each twist stretched it taller and narrower until it had braided itself into a tottering waterspout.
“Push it the other way!” Alex shouted.
“I’m definitely going to start rowing away now.” Anil pulled hard on the oars.
But it was too late. The waterspout seethed and lurched forwards to snatch up the rowing boat in its furious grasp.
Zoey tumbled backwards. “I’ve lost control!”
Alex lunged to touch the tossing surface of the sea before the waterspout could devour them. Sea magic flowed through his body like salt water streaming along his veins, fizzing cold and strong. But he couldn’t make contact in time to release his power into the ocean and unravel the danger.
Because Anil had moved faster. Yelping in panic, he had dropped the oars so that they slid out of their locks and beneath the raging waves. When Anil plunged a hand in after them, magic gushed recklessly from his fingertips, surging along the tangled threads of the ocean. It picked apart the whirling waterspout, collapsing it into a wave that washed roughly over the boat, almost capsizing them.
Cold water sloshed over Alex’s skin as he picked himself up from the bottom of the swaying boat. He nodded his thanks to Anil, who still clung tightly to the side, gasping with the effort of pouring out his magic. Zoey sat up from where she’d fallen under the central bench.
“That was close.” She wrung out her sleeves before glaring down at her hands. “The power is right there. Loads of it! I just can’t make it do what I want.”
“And I can only actually use my magic when we’re about to die.” Anil flexed his fingers as if they were somehow faulty.
“You’re both still learning,” Alex said. The wave had soaked him to the skin, and he shivered. “It’ll be a while before either of you can fully control your power.”
If they all survived long enough.
Alex had a lot more experience with sea magic. Last summer, he had discovered that Haven Bay, his sleepy seaside home, was actually an ancient place of the sea’s power – the last one left in the world. That meant it came complete with the last remaining Water Dragon, a powerful protector of the ocean. They had bonded and Alex’s own magic had been unlocked.
Since then, he had had the chance to practise his newfound powers on nefarious pirates trying to steal magic for themselves and an army of overgrown ocean parasites that had tried to turn the Water Dragon against him.
His friends’ sea magic had only awakened a few months ago, when the original dragon had surrendered its physical form to fully pour its power into the ocean and save the world from the parasite infestation. That left its baby – the new Water Dragon – still learning its magic too.
Which meant Alex was somehow left as the most experienced magic user of the group and had inherited the unwanted role of teacher.
He was happy that Zoey and Anil now had magic too. It would make them a stronger team in their mission to protect Haven Bay. As the last place of power, keeping it safe from anybody who would exploit its strength was crucial to defending the entire ocean.
Alex had hoped that sharing his magic would take some of the pressure off him. But teaching was just a different kind of pressure. He knew his friends were disappointed not to be learning more quickly. Despite him having many more months of experience, he didn’t feel qualified to be coaching anybody. Before, there had been an ancient Water Dragon with centuries of experience to guide them. There was no way he could live up to that.
The young new Water Dragon bobbed up to the surface beside their rowing boat, lifting its scaly, lion-like head to check on them. It had doubled in size over the winter, maybe more, and the grey and green scales on its long, serpentine back had hardened into fitted plates of armour. The whiskery spines under its chin had thickened to the size of icicles.
Alex scratched around them now, making the dragon squeeze its eyes shut in pleasure. Something wriggled inside his jacket – octopus arms tugging open the zip. Kraken heaved her splotchy blue body along his arm to plop onto the dragon’s head, wrapping it up in a tender hug.
As well as giving them the power to control and protect the ocean, sea magic also allowed Alex and his friends to connect with sea animals and work alongside them as allies. Kraken had fought at Alex’s side right from the start.
“You should really know more about all this than me,” Alex told the dragon. Undoubtedly, it was stronger than him. But it was also young, easily distracted and lacking in confidence now its parent was gone.
Thankfully, the winter had been quiet (“Boring!” Zoey insisted daily, frustrated at the lack of pirates or monsters against which to wield her newfound power). Almost every afternoon they had rowed out to the mouth of Haven Bay to practise their magic at a safe distance from the locals.
The town rose in layers from the beach, the wide sea wall topped by wooden-framed shops, including Neptune’s Bounty where Alex’s family lived, and the boatyard Zoey called home. Further up the hill, a row of multicoloured houses gave way to a thick strip of trees and bushes that rose steeply to the town’s peak. There, tall white wind turbines turned their gleaming blades in perfect synchronicity.
It had taken the townspeople a while to accept that everything they had considered quaint myth about Haven Bay was actually real. Their initial suspicion that the Water Dragon and Alex’s sea magic would rain down disaster on them all had soften
ed to reluctant tolerance in some and defiant pride in others. For every person who crossed the street to avoid Alex and his friends, there was somebody else pleased to have proof that their hometown was special.
Still, it seemed sensible to keep the townspeople onside by not accidentally drowning anybody.
“Let me try again.” Zoey reached for the water and flared her magic.
As with all things in life, Zoey had approached learning magic with supreme confidence. Nobody could deny she was strong – any wave she summoned was twice as powerful as it needed to be – but she didn’t have the control to match. Most training sessions ended with her almost sinking the boat.
“Please don’t.” Anil took her arm and gently guided it away from the water.
Anil’s learning experience had been the total opposite. Although he was every bit as strong as Zoey, he was too cautious to use his power unless an emergency forced him into panicked action. That made him unreliable in how his magic manifested – if he was able to summon it at all.
When Zoey batted Anil away and reached for the sea again, Kraken interrupted by spitting a bullet of water into her face.
“How dare you?!” she bellowed in outrage. Kraken’s skin flared bright red in warning and Zoey slumped sulkily on the boat’s bench. “Fine, you win.”
A walkie-talkie fuzzed beside her. “If yer quite finished drownin’ each other, it’s time we were headin’ home.”
Grandpa attended their afternoon training sessions to provide adult supervision, floating at a safe distance on his swan-shaped pedal boat. He lifted an arm to wave them towards shore. Four sea otters stacked themselves up on the seat beside him, each copying the gesture. Alex had been too busy to notice the fading late-afternoon light, grey cloud dimming towards black, the waves moodily reflecting the fast-approaching darkness.
Anil reached for the oars before remembering he had lost them.
“I’ll propel us,” Zoey said, reaching for the water again.
Alex groaned and doubled over, almost falling to the floor of the boat.
“All right, I won’t, no need to be so dramatic!” Zoey huffed.
But it wasn’t the threat of Zoey’s unpredictable power that had affected Alex – instead, a strange sickness was lurching in his belly. His head swam and his legs shook as he lowered himself to sit in the bottom of the boat.
“Are you okay?” Anil asked.
“I knew we shouldn’t have eaten those three-day-old bao buns I found at the bottom of my school bag,” Zoey said.
“It’s not that. It’s…” Alex winced, tensing his jaw as pressure built inside his skull. “Magic. Or something like it, but…twisted. Out there.”
Weakly, he pointed towards the mouth of the bay. A bank of low cloud was brewing on the horizon, milky grey in the gathering darkness.
“I feel it now too,” Anil said, gripping the sides of the boat. “It’s like my insides are getting tied around each other.”
Zoey nodded and pressed a hand to her stomach. “It’s getting stronger.”
The cloud thickened, congealed. It was rising up from the ocean rather than down from the sky. Fog, not cloud. Once it had formed a thick layer it began to move towards the mouth of the bay.
“We should get off the water,” Alex said.
Anil winced. “I lost the oars,” he reminded him.
The sickness stifled Alex’s magic, twisting it out of shape, making it impossible to try and summon a wave that would carry them to shore.
The rowing boat rocked as something bumped against it. They all turned to find Grandpa tying a line between their craft and the swan boat.
“Hold on tight. Me and these furry lads’ll give yer a tow.”
“Do you feel that?” Alex sputtered.
Grandpa looked at him blankly. “I feel a bit gassy – the usual.”
Once the boats were securely lashed together, Grandpa pushed hard on his set of pedals while the otters took turns pushing the other set with their front paws. The rope pulled taut and they lurched behind the swan boat as it made for the beach.
The fog behind them was now a galloping bank of white vapour. It rolled over itself as if giving chase, rapidly closing the distance. The bright beam from the lighthouse at the mouth of the bay was extinguished like a snuffed candle. The fog was so thick that it seemed to simply erase the world behind it.
“Hurry!” Alex cried, wrapping both arms around his middle as his stomach roiled.
“Doin’…our…best,” Grandpa huffed.
Both boats suddenly swept forwards as the Water Dragon reared up from the depths. Magic flared through the corruptive taint of the fog, unleashing a wave to drive them towards shore.
The swan boat scraped against the sand and Grandpa hauled on the rope to reel the rowing boat in alongside.
Although Zoey and Anil were wobbly on their feet, they were able to climb out of the rowing boat onto the beach. Together, they helped Alex over the side, where he dropped to his knees on the damp sand.
“It’s here,” he said.
There was just enough time to brace themselves before the fog broke over them like a wave.
CHAPTER TWO
GHOST TOWN
The fog instantly shrouded the air so thickly that Alex could hardly see his friends. The hazy vapour felt almost solid, clinging to his skin like glue. Alex tried to swipe it aside, but the fog simply curled away from his hand and resettled.
“Tell me what’s happenin’,” Grandpa said, voice firm despite an edge of fright. The otters chittered tensely.
Alex couldn’t speak because sickness restricted his throat and he didn’t know the answer anyway. Magic laced the fog, hovering over the town as it spread through the streets. It was akin to sea magic, but somehow oppressive, twisted into a new shape he didn’t recognize as an ally.
Green light ignited behind them, a powerful glow that cut through the fog, thinning it just a little. The Water Dragon had come as close to shore as it could to flare its sea magic – pure and true – as a protective barrier.
The sickness in Alex’s belly receded enough for him to stand up straight. Zoey and Anil did the same and they huddled together instinctively. Their magic mingled and the nausea retreated further.
“Thank you,” Alex called to the dragon. It bowed its head, before peering around as if expecting to come under attack.
“Let’s put the boats away and get everybody home safe,” Grandpa said.
The boats were stored in a small boathouse at the back of the beach. They shoved them in and locked the door before climbing the sea wall steps to the street above. The sickness threatened to overwhelm them again as they moved further from the dragon’s protection. Alex held his magic firmly as a barrier against it and felt his friends do the same.
The whole of Haven Bay was blanketed in fog. The old lamp posts had sprung awake but were nothing more than faint orange orbs in the heavy gloom. The fog created a supernatural stillness, but defiant shapes still moved under its cover: seagulls flitted overhead, disappearing as they alighted on rooftops; windows and doors thudded shut to keep the fog outside; footsteps were muffled so it was impossible to tell if they were moving closer or away.
“Pardon?” said Anil.
Zoey looked at him blankly. “What?”
“Didn’t you just say something?”
Somebody whispered in Alex’s ear, too quietly for him to make out the words. He whirled around to see who had spoken, but nobody was there.
“All right, everybody back to the shop,” Grandpa insisted. “I’ll call yer parents to pick yer up from there.”
They shuffled through the fog in a tight huddle, groping uncertainly ahead and making slow progress over the cobbles. By staying close to his friends, Alex could keep the sickness at bay, their magic combining into a guardian aura. The otters escorted them in a loose circle like bodyguards.
“This isn’t normal fog,” Anil said.
Zoey huffed a laugh. “It’s like that time I accidentally filled my workshop with artificial whale farts.”
Anil took a notepad from his pocket to jot down a description. “There must be a reason it’s here.”
“I’m willing to bet it’s not for anything good,” Zoey replied, only sounding slightly excited at the prospect.
A figure lurched towards them through the fog. Crookedly stooped, it waved a long weapon in the air at the sight of them. Alex, Zoey, Anil and Grandpa all tensed, ready to fight, the otters springing protectively in front of them.
