Curious goings on

Curious Goings-on at the Isaac Newton Academy Part 1 (To be read during period 1) Ms Spencer lay a fist hard on the desk in consternation.

“This is preposterous!” the esteemed Vice Principal exclaimed. “Another really boring conversation with a student. That’s the fifth I’ve had just today.

What can be happening to our students? Are we pushing them too hard?”

Ms MacFarlane raised a laconic eyebrow.

“An absurd suggestion, Ms Spencer,” she replied rather suavely. “But you may put your mind at rest. I have solved this little mystery entirely to my satisfaction already.”

“Impossible!” Ms Spencer retorted.

“Indeed?” Ms Macfarlane enquired. Briefly she glanced at the electrician who had been working on the wiring all week. He’d removed the panel from a plug socket and was reaching a screwdriver into the recess.

“Do you suppose you could test the circuitry in the first floor corridor?” she suggested. When they were alone, Ms MacFarlane confided in the Vice Principal, “My dear Ms Spencer, how many times have I explained, that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The explanation for the recent activity-or lack of activity- is quite simple. Our students…are being turned….into zombies. And I know who is responsible.”

With a gasp, Ms Spencer let drop the spoon with which she had stirred her coffee…

Curious Goings-on at the Isaac Newton Academy Part 2 (To be read during period 2) “This is weeeeeeeeeird,” Ms Rudd opined, her usually reliable articulacy entirely failing her.

“Yeah, weeeeeird,” Mr Taylor agreed, managing to retain entirely his usual lack of articulacy.

The erstwhile English teachers were on break duty in the playground, looking out upon a deathly silent scene. The students were ‘playing’, but not in a manner they had ever seen before. Silently, the students of INA had arranged themselves in rows like army soldiers. At the front of the squadron four grim-faced prefects commanded them to “MARCH, HALT, ABOUT TURN!” “I greeted Taner Mustafa this morning and there wasn’t so much as a twinkle in his eye,” Ms Rudd sighed.

“I was chatting to 9W this morning and they couldn’t even be bothered to argue with me,” Mr Taylor confessed sadly.

At that moment Mr Beattie crossed the playground to greet them, his polo shirt billowing over his Olympian physique. He was in a foul mood.

“Unbelievable,” he fumed, “Worst bit of football I’ve ever seen. I won’t be able to look Mayfield in the face with this lot!”

“What’s this?” Mr Coughlin enquired, appearing suddenly as though he had a way of magically sensing other people’s misfortunes.

“I’ve just watched Tyrese Mitchell literally walk a ball up to the net…and then miss! They don’t pass, they don’t tackle. They don’t even run!”

“You know, I’ve just taught the worst lesson of my life,” Mr Coughlin pitched in. “Every song was note perfect…but it had no soul. They were like… like…

They were like z…”

Mr Coughlin’s simile withered to silence on his tongue. The students, all of them, arms outstretched and mouths hung open, were walking clumsily toward them…

Curious Goings-on at the Isaac Newton Academy Part 3 (To be read during period 3) As the zombie children advanced mercilessly upon the terrified teachers, Ms MacFarlane was busy on the first floor. Flanked by police officers, the Principal advanced upon a lone, innocent-looking electrician as he laboured on.

“Officers, arrest him!” Ms MacFarlane demanded, a calm urgency in her voice.

“B…but that’s just the electrician,” the police officers chuckled. “You can’t call us here with daft tails of zombification…”

“And a gifted electrician he is,” Ms MacFarlane remarked, “the first I’ve met able to work on the wiring…while the electricity is still on!”

Seeing that his ruse had been discovered, the brain-sucking grotesque from planet Narcos wheezed a laugh and let his flimsy human flesh disguise split and fall at his knees in a pink puddle. The creature revealed was huge, its two heads scraping the ceiling, drool and slime spilling copiously from his hideous yellow-green skin. Instantly the police officers ran.

It was then that a door was kicked open by none other than….Mr CliftMatthews! The Head of Science performed a combat roll, landing with his bubbling test tubes of viscid solutions improbably unspilt.

“Don’t worry Ms MacFarlane,” he assured. “I’ve watched enough science fiction and run enough hair-brained and frankly dangerous experiments to know how to deal with this oversized gecko.”

With that, Mr Clift-Matthews tossed a test tube at the beast.

The creature wailed. His skin began to bubble and steam and he withered before their very eyes.

“You may have defeated me,” the monster groaned, his body now little more than a mess over the floor, “but it’s too late for your students. I have feasted on the ideas that once filled their brains. There are now, all of them, mindless drones!”

Ms MacFarlane gazed out of the window to see them, in their hundreds, the once-bright eyed children now brain-dead as they advanced hungrily upon their teachers…

Curious Goings-on at the Isaac Newton Academy Part 4 (To be read during period 4)

“I’m going to die and I never mastered the tin whistle!” Mr Coughlin blubbed as the zombie mass drew nearer.

“Just think of those young minds, so full of creativity and original thought, now drained and empty,” Mr Crowther-Green sighed.

“Is there no hope?” Ms Field demanded somewhat melodramatically, battling off the living carcass of Yusra Kilik as she tried to bite off her tutor’s finger.

“Hey, what’s that sound?” Ms Balsdon wondered, elbowing a zombie Saskeia Francis with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary.

The gaggle of tremendously skilled and committed teachers paused to listen.

There, sure enough! It was the sound of a helicopter’s propeller blades.

Within minutes it was upon them, its noise drowning everything out. The zombie children screeched and screamed, driven wild by the noise. They peered up at the metal beast hovering above them. The helicopter’s side door slid open to reveal…Ms Spencer!

“Feed on these!” the Vice Principal sang as she threw armfuls of wrapped packages down to the ground below. The zombie children scrabbled about, picking up their packages, ripping away the packaging to reveal…books.

“Free yourselves from your lifeless state of ruin! Reignite your imagination!

Read!”

And scanning the pages, making words from the black ink shapes upon the paper-and from those words, pictures, ideas, worlds-the sparkle returned to the eyes of the students of the Isaac Newton Academy.