Gravediggers (20 page)

She nods. “That may be. But look, girl—”

Enough. “My name is Kendra.”

“
Kendra?
That's no name for a girl.”

“You are easily the first O'Dea I've ever met.”

“Fair enough,” she says. “Look,
Kendra
, you did something stupid, and you got us in a real pickle here. But at least you made a move. You stood your ground, you went through on your threats, and you did your best to help your pals. If you're going to screw up, then screw up trying, and you tried as hard as you could. No fault in that. Those two out there”—she hikes a thumb toward the mouth of the cave—“those
boys
, they'll always listen to what you have to say, what you're
thinking
, but they'll always want the action for themselves, got me? Especially the blond one. I can see it in his eyes. You better make sure you stand your ground, no matter who says they can take care of the problem or what terrible beast comes stumbling out of the woods to eat you. Being smart is great and all, but the real sweet stuff is in the
action
, you know, the, eh . . .”

My heart swells, and my eyes sting. “Adventure.”

“Right. Boys think they should have it all. Prove 'em wrong.”

Her knees pop as she stands, and her neck cracks as she twists her head, and suddenly, as she's looming over me with her wild hair and bright eyes, I feel a kinship with this woman. She knows about adventure not because she has gotten tattooed or gone bungee jumping once, but because she lives every day fighting against evil. She holds out a hand, and I take it, envying its strength and hardness.

“Here,” she says, handing me the torch. “Getting dark. You'll need it.”

Outside, the sun is almost down behind its cloudy curtain, and Ian and PJ are champing at the bit, wringing their hands and tapping their toes in anticipation. When Ian sees me, he smiles goofily. “You sure you want to be waving that torch around?” he says. “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

“I'm fine,” I say, and then, “but if you want it, you can have it.”

He shakes his head. “Nah, it's probably best that you have it. You're pretty official when it comes to things like this, and I'm kind of a klutz.”

“How do we beat that zombie to Homeroom Earth?” asks PJ, raring to go. “If she's taking the main path, how do we get there before her to stop her? Is there a car?”

“No car,” says O'Dea, “but there're shortcuts in the woods, if you know how to navigate 'em.”

“Navigating the woods is not our specialty,” says Ian. “Can you come along and show us the way?”

The Warden shakes her head. “No can do. I've got work to do cleaning up this mess you've made for me. But I can help. Remember when I brought PJ up here?” She crouches, digs her fingers into the ground, and twists something circular and heavy. With a grunt, she pulls a huge disklike rock out of the clearing floor to reveal a black hole in the ground. “I got tunnels carved all through this mountain. One of them will lead you back to your school trip.”

“Are you kidding me?” asks Ian. “We can't navigate the woods, much less get around in a bunch of underground tunnels—”

O'Dea dips her hand into the ashes of the fire, then takes PJ by the shoulder and draws a symbol—a circle with a cross coming from its top—on his forehead. She mumbles something low and guttural, and PJ's eyes go wide.

“Whoa,” he says, “that feels . . . funny.”

“Follow that symbol,” she tells him. “If you see it in the dark, it means you're going the right way.”

“Now wait,” says PJ, “will it glow, or will there be some kind of—”

“Enough talking!” she yells, and shoves PJ into the hole, where he collapses with a grunt. She nods to Ian and me, and before I can allow myself to think twice, I'm leaping in after him, going after that last zombie and, hopefully, our destiny.

Chapter Twenty-one
PJ

F
or a second, the tunnel is just a dark, root-ceilinged cavern flickering orange from Kendra's torch. Then the ashes on my forehead fill with a cold, vibrating light that extends down into the backs of my eyes, and suddenly a symbol—a ball with a cross on top of it—glows a faint blue along the wall down one shadowy tunnel.

“There,” I say, pointing toward it. “Where that glowing sigil is painted.”

“I don't see anything glowing,” Ian replies.

“Lead us,” says Kendra, handing me the torch, and I walk toward the twinkling blue sigil, then jog, then run after it.

If only I could film this. Words like
awesome
and
epic
don't do it justice.

Scraggly thick roots and pointed stalactites go rushing overhead, small rodents and insects scurry underfoot, but I keep running, following the shimmering magic symbols etched into the walls, my friends running behind me to stay within the orb of light the torch provides. Every time we reach an intersection of tunnels, the sigil appears against one wall, pulling me farther down at greater speeds, my sneakers pounding hard against the soft underground earth. Yesterday, I would've been content to film this, edging warily through these tunnels inch by inch, but I'm in love with this feeling—my calves taut, my arms pumping, my eyes pulling me deeper and deeper into the tunnels in the direction I know is right.

Then, just like that, flecks of yellow light dance in my vision, and Ian, Kendra, and I burst through a wall of sticker bushes and into the cool fresh air. A few yards away sits the Homeroom Earth parking lot, glowing obnoxious yellow beneath halogen streetlights. Just beyond it, the mess hall shines warmly. I wipe at the electric sigil on my forehead until the ashes have smeared away and my second sight fizzles out of my eyes in a little burst of pins and needles.

“Do you think we made it before she did?” whispers Ian.

“Hard to tell,” says Kendra. “She could be anywhere on the premises. We could have passed her using the underground shortcut. They're slow moving, after all.”

“They
were
,” says Ian, “before you torched the dream catcher and they got loco.”

“This conversation gets us nowhere,” says Kendra.

Something colorful catches my eye on top of one of the cars in the lot, and a distinct sense of
uh-oh
rushes through me.

“Let's split up,” I say.

“It's my belief that splitting up is a bad idea,” says Kendra. “With our concerted efforts—”

“Look,” I say, and point to the red-and-blue plastic lights on top of two of the cars in the parking lot. Two police cruisers sit on one side of our bus. “We've been lost overnight, remember? They've got the cops here looking for us, and if we get caught running around trying to find this runaway zombie, we aren't going to get far.”

“We could tell them the truth,” suggests Kendra.

“Grown-ups never believe the truth,” Ian counters. “Especially teachers. PJ's right; we need to split up. If they catch one of us, the other two can keep looking around and trying to find the zombie.”

“And when we find her,” asks Kendra, “what then?”

“
Then
we get an adult,” I say, “and tell them to bring the cops. We trap her someplace, lock the doors, and go looking for help.” I reach out and touch Ian's shoulder. “
Don't
try to fight her, okay? I know that seems like a good idea, but it's not worth the risk of getting bit.”

Ian nods calmly. There's hope for him yet. “Good call, man. Meet back here in twenty minutes if you haven't found anything.”

We stay low, tiptoeing past the parked cars and into the courtyard of Homeroom Earth. A uniformed police officer stands in front of the bonfire pit with his back to us, surveying the area. The only lights that are on are in the windows of the mess hall, from which I can hear the rumbling of voices.

“Perfect,” I whisper. “Everyone's at dinner. If we stay out of sight, no one will know we're here.”

“All right,” says Kendra. “Ian, you take the boys' bunks. I'll take the girls' bunks. PJ, you take the arts and crafts building. Keep your eyes peeled, and if you see anything, call for help. Let's go.”

Ian and Kendra dart off toward their assigned bunks, leaving me to sneak around the policeman by the fire pit and walk as slowly as possible up the porch steps of the arts and crafts building. At one point, my foot lands on a weak step and a long, high-pitched creak breaks through the silent air. I duck down low, but the cop only looks around a little, makes a face, and checks his watch. The door to the building opens slowly and silently, and it isn't until I'm in the darkened hallway that I dare to stand straight up and walk around like a human being.

The arts and crafts cabin is quiet and still, draped in concentrated darkness. Moonlight pours in through big front windows, but it's barely enough to see by. Half of the room is broken up by long tables with benches around them, while the other has a wraparound counter with sinks and art supplies lining it. The whole thing is bathed in oblong shadows that merge with my horror movie knowledge to drive my imagination wild—the paint-flecked tables look like giant coffins, and every brush-filled cup seems like a shrunken head on the counter, spiky hair standing up in fright.

Every bone in my body begs me to go find Kendra and Ian, to turn on a light so the place won't look so creepy and twisted, but I take a deep breath and swallow as much of the fear as I can. That's the old PJ, the PJ who didn't run with twelve-point bucks and bodycheck the living dead. This new PJ is hard, brave, ready to fight anything in his path—

Something scratches around in a supply closet and I nearly pee my pants.

All right, I need to step back, be careful. If the zombie's in there, she's going to come lurching out with her arms up, ready to grab me by the neck and take a big old bite out of my face. I'm going to yank the door open really quick and step back, and if I see a rotten claw come out of it, I'll run like my life depends on it, which makes sense, seeing as it does.

Three, two, one—

“Now,” I whisper. I grab the knob and yank the closet open, ready for anything.

There's another scratch, and a mouse comes scurrying out onto the linoleum floor.

Classic. My heart feels like it's punching me in the ribs over a stupid mouse. It's never felt so good to exhale. “Shoo,” I say, kicking my foot out at the mouse.

The rodent squeaks at me and patters across the floor of the art room.

Watching it, I finally notice the footprints.

And the smell.

Out of the shadows, a tattered foot, caked with filth, stomps down on the mouse with a squishy thud, and she steps into view, ragged lips quivering in hunger, remaining eye shining cold lunar white out of the dark pit of its socket, body a heavy swaying mass of dead skin and slack tendon. My breath leaps into my throat and grows three times too big. She bends over with a sickening pop and closes her hand around the mouse under her foot. The poor thing squeaks the entire time she takes it in her cold dead grip, stands back up, and shoves it into her mouth. The yellow teeth hang open for a moment, and then the jaw moves, there's a crunch, and the squeaking stops. O'Dea's lunch tickles the back of my throat.

The zombie chews the mouse for what seems like forever, and then she's silent, and my body is all ice-cold and every one of my joints starts quivering at once, and we just stare at each other, there, in the cabin, me shaking like a leaf, her still and quiet as the dead.

And I think,
Maybe she's full
.

The mouth opens and lets out a blood-curdling scream. The hands rise, and she comes at me. I duck out from under her grasp and switch places with her, backing up toward the long art tables.

“
HELP!”
I scream over and over, but if anyone hears me, they don't come.

The zombie turns back around and lunges in my direction. The benches hit the backs of my legs, and then I'm climbing backward over the table and falling off the other side, putting as much stuff between myself and the zombie as humanly possible, but then she's climbing over the table, snatching out at me with her rotten hands, and I scramble down to the end of one long table and run back across the room.

This arts and crafts room is probably big enough to fit a whole class of kids, but when it's you and a bloodthirsty zombie playing a game of tag in it, it shrinks, and it's impossible to get away from the cannibalistic psychopath in the middle of the room. The zombie and I circle each other for what seems like ages. I scream for help until my throat is sore. Every time I get to the door to try and run away, her dry, bony fingers brush my hair and I dart away from the doorknob just in time to not get bitten. Soon, I'm exhausted, but there's no time to catch my breath before she comes at me.

Finally, I duck beneath one of the long tables and scurry down its length until I'm huddled in the corner of the room. The zombie gets down on her hands and knees and comes crawling at me, and the dead tree we used to kill Deborah comes to mind. I put my hands up under the table and push as hard as I can, push with my whole body, and slowly it lifts, then goes tumbling over, landing on its side and slamming down onto the zombie's waist like a heavy, blunt guillotine.

But now I'm trapped.

The zombie is pinned beneath the table—but she's still coming, her outstretched claws and snapping teeth only inches away from me, horrible noises of popping bone and tearing flesh coming from where the table has split her in half. And now I'm backed into a corner, legs against my chest, with nowhere to go.

“PJ?” The door swings open and Kendra pokes her head in, glances at me, then stops dead, her eyes turning huge. “Oh my God.”

“Get help!” I scream. There's a snap, and the zombie stretches a full inch closer to me. Her guttural snarls become rhythmic like panting breaths—
NYARGH, NYARGH, NYARGH.

Kendra begins breathing hard, looking around the room, then back out the door, and then looks at me with a glint of hope in her eyes. “I have an idea,” she shouts.

“No more ideas!” I scream. “Get help!”

I hear the sink running and water splashing, and Kendra reappears over the overturned table with a paint-smeared art bucket of steaming water, and I remember what she and O'Dea said about speeding up decay.

There's a horrible ripping sound, and the zombie's torso comes free of her lower half. She crawls forward on her elbows dragging a tail of sinew behind her, the yellow teeth slowly open wide, and a blast of cold rotten air bursts out at me in the form of a bone-chilling moan. Kendra leaps on top of the table and pours the hot water over the zombie just as her talons close around my throat.

Sure enough, the dry mummified flesh bloats white and begins dripping off her zombie bones like gobs of frosting, but all through Kendra's pouring, those teeth stay unchanged as they gape wider and wider in their descent toward my face.