Class Six and the Nits of Doom (10 page)

Anil stood blinking across the classroom. The music had stopped and so had everyone’s need to dance. Winsome was standing frozen with her hands in the air, and Emily was
wobbling back down onto the soles of her feet.

Anil looked round some more. Slacker’s huge body was on the carpet. He was panting as if he’d run a—well, actually, given that it was Slacker, he was panting as if he’d
just
run
.

But Slacker didn’t seem to be the source of the crash. Beyond him, at the front of the class, was a tangle of arms and legs. Anil could only tell who was there by the shoes. Two of the
legs were wearing pointy-toed shoes with little curvy heels.

Miss Broom. That was Miss Broom.

And the other shoes were great things like paddle boats, only smellier.

Rodney. Of course, Miss Broom had been dancing with Rodney.

‘What’s happened?’ demanded Slacker, trying to get up.

Serise took a cautious step forward. ‘Miss Broom isn’t dead, is she?’ she asked, with only a tiny tinge of hope in her voice.

Emily squealed and jumped backwards.

Everyone looked at Winsome. Winsome was the sensible one: if anyone was going to know what to do, it would be Winsome.

Jack bent down and stared very closely at the jumble of arms and legs.

‘Rodney’s breathing,’ he reported. ‘At least, he’s got puffs of smoke coming out of his ears.’

‘How about Miss Broom?’ quavered Emily.

‘Oh, she seems to be dead all right. No, hang on, I think her nose is twitching.’

Serise frowned. ‘Is that good? I mean, it isn’t a death-twitch or anything, is it?’

‘There’s no such thing as a death-twitch,’ said Anil. ‘At least…there’s not with humans. I don’t think.’

‘Hang on.’ Slacker put up a hand up to one of his antennae. ‘I seem to be receiving something. A sort of howling, like a police car.’

All of a sudden Rodney moved. He kicked out his leg so that one of his vast stinky shoes sailed off his foot, hit the ceiling, and ended up in the sink.

‘Thank goodness!’ said Winsome. ‘Rodney! Rodney are you all right?’

Rodney got to his feet in a swift, elegant way which was as unlike Rodney as it could possibly be. He moved…he moved like a
leopard
.

Come to think of it, the brown spots on his face looked just like leopard spots, too.

Rodney cast a swift look round at the others.

‘Well?’ he said, in a voice that was almost a snarl.

Class Six smiled uncertainly at each other.

Behind Rodney, Miss Broom was twitching again. In fact she wasn’t so much twitching as vibrating, faster and faster, until all Class Six could see was a blur.

And then she vanished. Completely. Just like that. One moment there was a full-sized teacher lying vibrating on the floor of the classroom, and the next there was nothing but empty space.

Several people screamed.

Rodney’s staring eyes were like emeralds. His pupils had turned into big-cat slits.

And then he said the worst thing he could possibly have said.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said, and he licked his lips with a long pink tongue.

Emily squawked and tried to jump behind Jack, but as Jack did exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, all they did was bump into each other and fall over.

Everyone else began to back away. Rodney was flexing his fingers experimentally. They’d grown claws.

Serise looked round for a weapon and picked up a small plastic ruler.

‘If only Miss Broom hadn’t gone and vanished!’ gasped Winsome. ‘She could have saved us.’

Jack turned to her, frowning.

‘I’ll soon sort Rodney out,’ he said in a dangerous sort of way—and Class Six saw to their horror that Jack’s face had a strangely hairy look about it.

‘Not him, too!’ said Serise.

‘It’s all right, Jack!’ said Winsome quickly. ‘There’s no need. I’m sure Rodney doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. Do you, Rodney?’

‘Hurt
people?’ Rodney echoed. He put his head on one side, as if considering the idea. Rodney had always been slow on the uptake. ‘No, I don’t want to hurt
anyone—’

‘Phew!’ said half the class.

‘—I just want to
eat
them,’ Rodney went on, in his new growly voice. ‘I just want to sink my teeth into their flesh and feel their blood spurting down my
throat.’

Everyone became aware that Rodney was at the front of the classroom, so he was between Class Six and the door.

‘Miss Broom!’ called Winsome suddenly. ‘Miss Broom, where are you? Because we could really do with a bit of help at the moment, please!’

Something made a swift fierce sound, but that was Rodney growling. He stepped quietly and heavily forward towards the rest of the class.

Jack moved forward to meet him.

‘No!’ said Anil, attaching himself to Jack’s elbow. ‘You don’t want to fight Rodney. He’s got claws and he thinks he’s a leopard. And anyway, he’s
nuts!’

Jack looked up at Anil.

‘But he’s always been nuts,’ he pointed out.

‘Yes,’ said Anil, ‘but only in a harmless stupid sort of a way. The nits of doom have changed him. They’ve turned him vicious!’

Jack stopped for a moment, gazing at Anil with bright pink eyes.

‘Well, you’ve got nits, too, just the same as him,’ he said. ‘My eyes have gone so they can see really tiny things, and I can see them in your hair.’

Class Six kept one eye on Rodney, but they couldn’t resist shuffling closer to look at Anil’s head.

‘I can see the nits quite well against your black hair,’ Jack went on. ‘They’re like tiny white rugby balls, but…hang on, they’ve got things inside them.
They look a bit like squid and a bit like cheese graters, and they’re all holding steering wheels.

Jack went to pick one of the nits out of Anil’s hair, but it whizzed away from his fingers and dived down into one of the holes in Anil’s skin where the hairs came out.

‘It’s gone inside your head,’ said Jack.

‘Erghhhh!’ said Class Six. ‘Errghhhhh! Errrghhhh! Errrrgghhh!’

And then they all began scratching like mad.

‘It’s no good!’ Emily was rubbing at her head until her hair stood on end. ‘It’s no good, I can feel them burrowing into my head! I can feel them driving through my
brain!
What are we going to do?
’

Winsome was the only one standing still.

‘Keep calm,’ she said, determinedly. ‘Panicking isn’t going to help us. We need to keep calm and try to think what we can do.’

Anil had his hands clasped to his head.

‘But we
can’t
think what to do!’ he cried. ‘That’s the point. The nits have got right into our brains and they’re changing the way we’re
thinking.’

Emily freaked completely. ‘Get them out, get them out!’ she shrieked. ‘I can’t stand it!’

‘Sshh!’ commanded Slacker. ‘Someone will hear you and come and see what’s going on.’

Class Six wavered.

‘Is it murder, do you think, making your teacher disappear into thin air?’ asked Anil.

‘Well, even if it is, it wasn’t me!’ said Serise. ‘
I
didn’t touch her!’

‘It was all of us,’ said Winsome, very worried. ‘I wonder if it’s a crime to turn someone into a leopard?’

‘But Rodney might be something else by the time the police get here,’ said Slacker, hopefully. ‘He might be something really friendly and nice, like a…
hamster.’

Serise snorted.

‘There is
no way
Rodney could possibly end up being anything at all like a hamster,’ she said. ‘A ten-ton gorilla, possibly, but—’

‘Don’t even think about it!’ said Anil, shuddering. Jack suddenly sat down.

‘I hate to mention this,’ he said, ‘but talking of gorillas, I’ve got this terrible craving for bananas. And my armpits are really itchy, as well. And—’ He
squinted down inside his shirt. ‘Yes, I thought so. I’ve got black hair sprouting out all over my chest.’

Everyone shuffled away from Jack, remembered about Rodney, and shuffled back again.

‘It might not mean I’m going to be a gorilla, though,’ said Jack, thoughtfully. ‘I might just be turning into a chimpanzee. I wouldn’t mind that so much.’

‘But what should we do?’ asked Serise. ‘Do we call for help and get taken to prison for murdering our teacher, or do we let one of us be eaten by a leopard?’

‘Bags not me to be eaten,’ said Anil, quickly. ‘I’m too bony. Rodney might eat me and still be hungry. It’d be much better to let him eat someone fatter.
Hey,’ he went on, brightening, ‘we could say he ate Miss Broom, too!’

‘Good thinking,’ said Serise, who was as skinny as a broomstick herself.

Slacker Punchkin began shaking his head. ‘Well, I think that’s a totally rubbish—’ Then he twitched, and his antennae started to flash alternate red and green.

Slacker put a meaty hand up to one of them. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I think I’m getting a new radio station.’

There was a blood-curdling snarl behind them and everyone leapt several centimetres into the air. Rodney was on all fours, now. He seemed to have grown lots of new sharp teeth. A line of
glistening spit was hanging down to the floor from one of them.

Slacker was pushing his front teeth into his gums one by one.

‘I can hear wailing,’ he reported.

‘You’re picking up my brain waves,’ quavered Emily, who was as pale and shivery as a blancmange in an earthquake.

‘Or mine,’ admitted Winsome. ‘I keep trying to think what to do, but my head’s just full of wailing.’

Class Six looked at each other.

‘Even Rodney looks as if he can hear it,’ said Anil, because Rodney was batting at his ear with a hand which was halfway to being a paw.

Slacker frowned. He was screwing up his face as if he was listening really carefully.

‘Everyone shut up a minute,’ he said. ‘I think I nearly got it in tune just then. I think… Hang on!’ He switched to twisting his chin, and began to look more
confident.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘It’s on FM, not digital. It’s someone saying something.’

Jack began to twist his chin, too. ‘You’re right. It’s a voice, a long way away. I think it’s saying…’

‘What?’ said everyone. ‘What’s it saying?’

Jack looked round at them all.

‘
Ball the chits
,’ he said.

Serise rolled her eyes.

‘Oh you idiot!’ she said. ‘You moron! You utter and complete cretin! Just what is
ball the chits
supposed to mean?’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘I suppose we have to find the…er…chits, and then, er…’

‘Give me strength!’ said Serise, despairingly.

‘Where’s my dictionary?’ asked Winsome. She got it from her drawer and flicked urgently through the pages. ‘Chit… chit… no, it’s not here. It goes
straight from chisel to chivalry.’

Slacker put his hand thoughtfully to his chin—and then suddenly stood up straight.

‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘I’ve just accidentally tuned the station in properly. Jack heard it wrong. That wasn’t
ball the chits
we picked up on our
antennae, that was
ball the NITS!
’

‘
Ball the nits!
’ proclaimed Jack. ‘Hurray! We’ve got it! Er…how can anyone ball a nit?’

Rodney was almost completely a leopard now. He was crouching on the floor by Miss Broom’s desk, warm and velvet-furred and dangerous. Only his glowing antennae, and the fact that he was
wearing trousers and an orange sweatshirt, gave away the fact that he was not a real leopard.

Slacker put his hand up to his chin again.

‘I can still hear it,’ he said. ‘
Ball the nits
. Again and again. At least, I think…’

Rodney’s eyes were glowing like the fires at the centre of the earth.

He stretched out a long arm, and his muscles moved smoothly under his beautiful fur. Each heavy paw looked as if it could knock someone’s head off.

Class Six had put all the tables between them and Rodney, but it was no use. Rodney crouched for a moment, with only the twitching of the black tips of his ears to show that he had not been
turned to stone—and then he sprang.

They all tried to get out of the way, but there were twenty-nine of them and only a small space behind the tables. The ones at the back fell over chair legs, and the rest fell over them.