Chapter 10 - A new crowd shuffles in
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Next day, when Alex wakes up, she quickly gets ready for the day and comes down for lunch. What?! This is early for her standards. Try having your ten hours of beauty sleep and be up early in the morning.
Anyway, Justin doesn't come to the dining hall for lunch. And, when Alex is done, she doesn't have time to go after him because she has a class early in the afternoon. And it is a long class, with several of the things she struggled herself to do while growing up, and now it is up to her to teach.
When the class is over, Alex finally has the time to go after Justin. He has to hear about what she saw, everything about Fiendl's late night strolls… Especially now that she knows there might be someone with evil intentions around.
She goes out to find him, and after looking in his office, in the teacher's lounge and then in the dining hall again - no, she knew she probably wouldn't find him there; she did find a piece of their awesome brownie, though - she finally finds him in the way to the entrance hall.
"Justin!" Alex shouts the second she glimpses him at far. "Gotta talk to you!" She says, walking to him. Justin waits for her, there is a tone of urgency in her voice that keeps him interested. "There something I gotta tell you. I've been seeing…"
She is interrupted when Justin pulls his wand from his back pocket and those red and blue lights are on again. These damn red and blue lights. The siblings stare at the wand as it sends the warning, meaning something bad is happening in the school.
"Now, what!?" Alex whines. She has already forgotten about what she was going to say.
"It's that all the time, now!" Justin complains. "We gotta go check that." He turns around, ready to leave.
"I don't want to!" Alex whines.
Justin stops and turns back, glaring at her. "Alex…" He forces through his gritting teeth. "Let's go!"
"Fine!" Alex grunts and follows him.
Soon they start hearing once again the commotion of people reacting to some threat, and the scared voices lead them to the entrance hall. Once there, they see the kids bunching up in the hall and all their eyes aiming to the door that takes to the patio. They run outside and find the absolute last thing they would expect in a school. A swarm of zombies come in through the doors of the castle.
"It's a zombie outbreak!" Justin shouts.
"Thank you, captain obvious! I can see that!" Alex retorts.
"Who opened the doors? They shouldn't be able to get through them. Someone must've opened it!"
"Can we concentrate on the obvious first?" Alex points out as the Zombies slowly come closer. "We could deal with a few zombies, but that many?"
"I know! It'll be impossible to control them if they get close to the students." Justin completes.
The zombies are getting close, already occupying half the patio and more coming in every second. Sure, they are not all that fast, but they are already too many to be controlled.
"I have an idea!" Justin exclaims. "Remember what happened when you opened that black hole inside the SubStation?"
"Come on, Justin! I don't think that bringing Mom here to yell at them will make them go away!" Alex shouts back.
Justin gawks at her, dumbfounded. "I mean actually open up a black hole!" He roars in his best aggravated tone.
"Ohhh! Yeah, that could work!" Alex casually muses.
"Just do it!" Justin demands.
"Fine!" Alex pulls out her wand and points it to the middle of the patio.
"Just send them somewhere they can stay until the specialists can deal with them." Justin tells her.
"I know that!" She gnarls back, annoyed. At the wave of her wand, a small black hole forms exactly in the middle of the patio, right under a couple of unlucky zombies that fall right in. However, the rest of them simply walk around it as if it didn't portray any danger.
"Hold it!" Justin shouts. "I'm gonna try to push them in!" He steps ahead again with his wand up ready to do his part to save the school when a clap of thunder resonates above, and one more time the red and blue lights get in his way. "Are you kidding me?!" He shouts. "That's it! I'm definitely getting rid of this thing!"
"Wait, I got a better idea!" Alex is there to get his back.
She holds her wand with both hands, clutching it firmly, and concentrating with fierce. Then, with a brighter flash on her wand, the black hole grows on the ground. The zombies around it start falling in by the bunch as it grows faster than the sluggish creatures can escape. As the black hole becomes a large hollow, a noticeably strong gust of wind picks up toward it.
Just as it happened before in the ballroom with the kids, Alex feels something punishing her skin, the same dust that took up the ballroom also accumulating out there. A clear swirl of dust forms as it dives into the whole.
Impressed by Alex's skilful spell, Justin watches the invading creatures disappear, one by one falling down the black hole until only a couple of zombies are left in a corner, trapped, as the black hole takes up the patio almost entirely.
"Hey! Little help, there!?" Alex yells at Justin.
"Oh, yeah!" Justin gives a quick wave on his wand toward the zombies and they are pulled to the hole.
That is it! No more zombies left. Justin waves his wand again to close the doors, isolating the castle. Alex draws her wand and the black hole quickly shrinks until it completely vanishes.
"Nice work!" Justin tells Alex.
"Admit it! You're happy that I'm here!" Alex teases.
"Well, I'm happy I can put your abilities to a good use."
"You know, I could've taught you that spell." Alex tells him.
"Thanks, but I prefer to focus on more constructive things, like making a black hole out of control disappear."
"But it was constructive. Did you see all the dust being sucked in? It's much cleaner now." She looks at him with a mocking grin.
"That's not exactly my idea of being constructive."
"Well, let's agree to disagree."
Justin buffs, shaking his head. "Fine! Just one thing. Where exactly did the black hole send them?"
"The only place that came to me was the Wizard City Hall." Alex says with some disdain.
Justin slowly turns to her, on his face something like panic, or anger, or fear, or whatever it is that he feels when she does these kinds of things that always blow up on his back. "What?" He probably wanted to shout it, but his gritting teeth didn't allow it.
"Sorry! I didn't know what else to do. But look at it this way. Who would you call to deal with the zombies?" She asks.
"I would call..." Justin start angrily but he stops and thinks for a second. "...the competent authorities at the City Hall."
"See?! We simply jumped a few steps. I'm sure they will treat the ones that still can be healed and take the others to… …wherever they came from." Alex's reasoning always baffles Justin.
"I'm pretty sure they would like some heads up before getting swamped by an army of zombies."
"Eh! I'm sure they know what to do."
Justin turns around, running his fingers through his hair and starts walking to the entrance hall. The group of students and teachers, all holding fearful stares at Justin, wait for instructions. "Okay! The zombies are gone for now." He says while walking in, followed by Alex. "Professor Stein, accompany the students to the dining hall. The others, we're gonna inspect the school in case any zombies found another way in. And I don't want anyone outside until we clear the area around. If anyone see Professor Fiendl, tell him to look for me. Let's go, now" He comes near Alex and grabs her arm. "You stay with me. We've had enough problems for one day." He tells her in a low tone.
"What!? So not fair!" Alex answers while Justin pulls her away.
Things happen as Justin said, and when they declare the school free of zombies, he clears the kids for dinner.
And it is in the dining hall that Fiendl finds Justin.
"Sir, I have news." He tells with some urgency.
"Any word from the Council about the zombies?" Justin asks.
"Yes! And I believe I know where the outbreak began." He replies. "Many of the zombies were people from the village. So I investigated and found out that the amusement park is setting up a zombie attraction."
Justin stares at him for a moment. "You mean… there were Zombies… in the park!?"
"That is what I just said, yes!" Fiendl confirms. "I believe that some of them must have escaped and that begun the incident. But I still have to confirm that. And this should be my next step."
"Alright! Thank you!" Justin replies. "And keep me informed."
"I certainly will, Sir." And Fiendl leaves to continue with his task of investigating the incident.
Justin grunts in anger. Why? Because something just crossed his mind and, if he is right, dealing with this will be… well, he is not going to like it.
Alex doesn't come down for dinner. She prefers to stay in her room and have breakfast for dinner as her father likes to have every now and then. Actually, what she really wanted was to watch a movie that was on, but then she couldn't remember the spell that makes dinner, and she was too lazy to go look for it. But, hey, she remembers the breakfast spell! It's not the worst way to end this day.