Bobby the Baboon and the Magic Minivan
Fighting Words Laois, Scoil Bhríde, Rathdowney, Co. Laois, 6th Class, 5 November 2025
Chapter 3
Meanwhile far away in Rathdowney, Bobby the baboon was driving to the playground in his minivan, which he uses to sell pasta. The van is black and orange with yellow wheels and has pasta stripes on the side. It was a wet autumn day, with the leaves turning and the sky was oddly turning a curious shade of green. Unknown to Bobby, this heralded the arrival of a Zombie Apocalypse!
Suddenly, Bobby heard a siren behind him. He pulled over and the garda approached, but something seemed wrong. The garda had a melted greenish-grey face; his eye was half-hanging out and his walk was more a shuffle than a walk. Bobby immediately drove off at speed, putting the pasta minivan into DRS , which is “drag resistance system.”
Driving through Rathdowney, he brought the van to a stop at the Card Stand to buy some Zombie Resistant Spray. He met Barry the dung beetle, who works in the shop. Barry sold him the spray can and pulled out the Twix-launcher gun. He told Bobby that the gun will stop the zombies by making them stand and dance the macarena.
Meanwhile, Ballacolla had been taken over and the locals – who are called Ballacollians - were being led by the zombie Beenie, who was the captain of the Ballacolla hurling team. With the zombie Ballacollians on their way, Bobby jumped into the van, turned the key and … nothing happened!
Barry, however, had a fix! He ripped out his pliers and frantically tried to fix the engine. Just then, however, with the zombies approaching, Seamus McPigeon appeared with his flock of pigeons. Swooping like dive-bombers, they pooped all over the zombies with their watery mushy poo. The acid in pigeon poo was lethal to zombies and caused them to melt. Meanwhile, Barry managed to fix the van and he opened fire with his Twix gun as the van sped off in the direction of Granstown Lake.
When they reached the lake, Bobby activated the transmuting button on the van and changed it into a submarine. He used the submarine to get to the island in the middle of the lake. The horde of zombies were left standing on the shore, looking at the island. Captain Beenie, the head zombie, lumbered forward and started sucking up the lake water. Just then, Bulldozer the rhino showed up on the shoreline. He ran around bulldozing the zombies with his horn, tossing them into the air.
Meanwhile, Barry was frantically loading and reloading his Twix gun, blasting away at the remaining zombies who then danced the macarena. Bobby and Barry thought they were safe but then they heard a squawk. Capt Beanie has Seamus McPigeon in his grasp. Captain Beanie roared, “I’m going to eat his brain if you don’t surrender the van!”
So Bobby has to either give up his van or watch his friend be devoured. He then has an idea! He turned on the pasta machine and made pasta, using sausages to look like the students from 6th class in Scoil Bhríde, Rathdowney, Co. Laois. These pasta people look like Rebeka, Zoya, Yeva, David, Milan, Tiernan, Livia, Liam, Grace, Ronalds, Eppie, Harry, Patriks, Marcus, Fionn, Diana, Sophie, Leonid, Ailish, Ruslan, Mayson, Chiedza, Tena, Sophia, Zoe, Serafim, Nathan and Odhran.
The pasta class were then fed to the zombies. Captain Beeanie let go of Seamus McPigeon and grabbed Tena the pasta girl instead and munched on her. Seamus McPigeon and his flock flew away to Jamaica in search of the special rice which contains Weldon juice, extracted from the Weldon tree.
In the meantime, Bobby and Barry were in trouble again. All the pasta children had been eaten, so what are they to do?! That’s when they heard, “Let’s go Weldon!” And they saw Weldon and the rest of the Rathdowney hurlers coming to the shore. They used their hurls to knock the zombies’ heads while shouting, “Bruises heal quicker than losers!”
It seemed that the zombies had been defeated, but then Bobby and Barry saw another zombie army coming towards them. They were the scarecrow zombies from Durrow, with flashing red eyes, sharp teeth and long arms. They were small, fast and annoying. They shouted, “We want the Scarecrow Festival back or we’ll eat you if you don’t!”
“Hold on just another few minutes, guys, the pigeons are on the way,” said Barry. Barry used his Twix launcher, Bobby used his zombie spray and Bulldozer rounded them up. The pigeons then appeared and they dropped the rice infused with Weldon juice on the zombies.
The zombies started to melt back into people. They were a bit confused and angry. They shouted at Bobby and accused him of turning them into the zombies: “You did this to us!” Bobby denied it.
Just then, the air around him shimmered and the potion he took wore off to reveal it had been Bobbie the witch all along!...
