The Smoky Corridor

by Chris Grabenstein

  “By jingo,” cried Joseph. “It’ll work! Keep the fire raging but divert the smoke back up to the main stack! Hurry! Tell him. He only listens to you!”

  So Seth passed on the next set of commands.

  The zombie strode back to the furnace. Shoved some levers.

  “And have him leave the door open on this end! Best to air out the corridor so the grown-ups we send in don’t suspect nothin’!”

  “Joseph?”

  “What, Seth?”

  “I’m not your zombie. You can’t keep bossing me around, telling me what to tell him.”

  “Who’s gonna stop me, boy-o? You?”

  Seth thought about that for a second. Joseph had been telling him what to do for 110 years and sometimes Seth just wanted to tell his big brother to stick a plug in his piehole.

  But Joseph was all the family Seth had ever known. Their father had died before Seth was born; his mother while giving birth to him. He so longed to be set free from this place, this school, to be reunited up in heaven with the parents he’d never met.

  But he wouldn’t leave without Joe. Joe had looked out for him for 110 years. And Joe wouldn’t leave until somebody paid for what Mr. Cooper had done.

  “Leave the door open!” Seth barked at the zombie. “Let the room air out. We’re gonna snag us a grown-up today!”

  “We sure are, little brother. Why, I figure we might even trap us a pretty little teacher named Daphne DuBois, who just happens to be related to Mr. Patrick J. Cooper himself!”

  “Hot diggity dog!” said Seth. “If we kill her, then we can surely rest in peace.”

  “Maybe, little brother,” said Joseph. “Maybe.”

  And while the zombie fiddled with gauges and stoked the firebox, Joseph started whistling, then singing again.

  Glory, glory, hallelujah

  Teacher hit me with a ruler

  Shot her in the butt with a rotten coconut

  And she ain’t gonna teach no more.

  84

  “Can that pistol blow stuff up?”

  The boy named Benny kept asking Eddie the same silly question, over and over.

  “Can it, like, shoot exploding fireballs and junk?”

  Daphne DuBois kept smiling. Pretending to like these children, most of whom she knew from her nightmarish lunches in the cafeteria.

  “All right, children,” she said, putting on the sickly sweet voice she had used to fool them all into thinking she could tolerate their company. “Time for everybody to go home. Isn’t that right, Zack? Tell your friends to go home. Zack?”

  “He left,” said Chuck Buckingham, the boy Daphne DuBois wished would just go have a heart attack and die already.

  She started blinking. Couldn’t control her twitching eyelids. “He left?”

  “Yeah,” said Benny. “Maybe he went to get a musket or something. Maybe a cannon. A cannon could blow up all sorts of stuff!”

  “Eddie? Inside. Now! Children? Go home! Or I swear on my dead uncle’s grave, I’ll flunk every stinking one of you!”

  The gaggle of giggly children instantly grew quiet.

  The heartbroken clump of them just stood there.

  The look on their faces?

  Why, it made Ms. Daphne DuBois smile.

  85

  Zack and Zipper hurried down the staircase to the janitor’s closet.

  Zack shoved open the door and saw that Malik or Azalea or somebody had left the sliding shelving unit wide open.

  He quickly grabbed a flashlight.

  “Come on, Zip. Into the root cellar. I’ll close the secret panel behind us.”

  But then Zack heard somebody thudding down the steps from the main building.

  He wouldn’t have time to close up the secret portal.

  “Let’s go!”

  Zack and Zipper darted into the root cellar.

  Zack whistled.

  Zipper jumped up into his arms.

  Zack sat down in front of the hole in the wall, worked his legs into the opening, and, snuggling Zipper, slid down the chute into the darkness.

  86

  Captain Pettimore had the girl’s body stop when it reached the bottom of the thirty-nine steps.

  This was his safe room.

  He ignited the red and green kerosene lanterns dangling from the ceiling.

  It felt good to do things again, simple things like striking a match, smelling the air, eating fried lard and eggs. He had done that at the girl’s home this morning when he’d first entered her body at eight a.m. By eight a.m. tomorrow, any lingering trace of the soul once known as Azalea Torres would be gone.

  For now, his soul shared this one body with her soul. But her soul was weak.

  Actually, it was slumbering in a trance. A deep voodoo trance.

  “Brother!”

  Pettimore felt the heart in his new chest skip a beat. The ghost who’d just materialized had startled him.

  “Hello, Mary.” He had Azalea sneer at his long-dead sister. “My, you look pretty in your wedding dress. Did they actually allow you to wear white?”

  “You must leave Azalea’s body!”

  He laughed. “Are you insane?”

  “Leave her, Horace! I beg of you.”

  “Go away, Mary. You have done what you were born to do: You, through your offspring, have given me everlasting life. Now leave. Do not disgrace our family’s good name yet again with your shameful deeds!”

  “But …”

  “By the way, I met your husband in a battlefield hospital down south. He died a coward, Mary, turning tail and running from the enemy. He brought indignity and shame to all those who bear his name. No wonder you two got along so well!”

  Weeping, the ghost of Mary Jane Hopkins disappeared.

  Laughing, Pettimore reached for the amulet he’d come to that room to find. It was suspended from a gold necklace, the one he had hung on that wall so long before. A tarnished silver disk embossed with a cryptic drawing:

  He draped it around his neck and left the small room.

  He walked about twenty paces, then, instead of continuing straight on to the old steamboat boiler, went up an intersecting passageway headed east.

  Pettimore reached a T and turned right. Within minutes, he was at the base of the right-hand staircase. He was in the zombie pit.

  McNulty was crouching in the darkness, waiting for him.

  87

  Kurt Snertz raced down the staircase to the basement, taking the steps two at a time.

  He had seen Jennings and his dumb little dog run into a room to hide.

  Kurt chuckled.

  You can run but you cannot hide—not from me!

  Swaggering, he sauntered up the hall. No need to run anymore. Jennings was trapped inside, believe it or not, the janitor’s closet.

  “Bad choice, lamebrain!” Kurt bellowed. “There’s all sorts of stuff in there for me to smack you with. Broom handles. Mop handles. Toilet plungers!”

  Snertz shoved open the door.

  The closet was dark, so he couldn’t see which corner scaredy-cat Jennings and his doofus dog were crouching in.

  “Nice try, dipstick.”

  Kurt flicked up the light switch. He saw shelves lined with cleaning supplies. A floor-buffing machine. Cartons of paper hand towels.

  But no Jennings. No dog.

  Then he noticed an opening in the far wall, right behind a set of shelves set at a screwy angle. It led to another room!

  “Gee,” Kurt said, chuckling, “I wonder where wacky Zacky could be hiding.”

  He made his way across the cramped closet, pushing boxes and coiled extension cords and cleaning crap out of his way.

  “You are so dead, Jennings!”

  He leapt through the opening.

  Into another empty room. This one had a dirt floor and stacked stone walls. There were a couple of heavy metal-band posters taped up for decoration and a picture of that old Civil War geezer the school was named after. Shelves, too. Wooden ones. Lined with glass j
ars filled with moldy powders, rancid fruit, and pickled peppers.

  “Gross,” Kurt muttered.

  Now he saw a hole in one of the walls.

  He went over to it. Got down on his hands and knees and peered into some kind of chute, only wide and deep enough for one person to crawl through at a time.

  There was a box full of junk on one of the shelves. Inside it, Kurt found a miniature flashlight. He twisted it on. Shone it into the hole.

  “Jennings? Is this your rat hole, you lousy stinking rat? Don’t make me come down there after you! Jennings?”

  No answer.

  “Okay. Now you are definitely gonna die!”

  Furious, Kurt Snertz clenched the flashlight in his teeth and slid through the hole.

  88

  Zack thought he heard Kurt Snertz screaming something from way up at the entrance to the tunnel.

  He didn’t care. He needed to find Malik.

  So Zipper and he kept walking forward. Zack swung his flashlight back and forth. He could see they were in some kind of very long mine shaft.

  Zipper barked.

  Ahead, a flashlight swirled around and a faint voice cried out, “Zipper?”

  Malik!

  “Malik? Is that you?”

  “Zack?”

  “Hang on! We’re coming.” Zack and Zipper started running straight for the quivering light.

  89

  “Don’t be fooled by this body,” Pettimore said to his slave. “It is I!”

  “Yes, master.”

  Pettimore’s neck felt stiff. This child’s body didn’t fit a soul of his size. No matter. In time, it would. The girl would grow. She’d eat all the richest foods in the world, because she would soon be the richest woman on earth!

  Still, the captain missed a few of his ghostly abilities.

  He could no longer flash into and out of portraits, see whatever he felt like seeing whenever he felt like seeing it. He couldn’t keep his eyes on all those who would rob him of his treasure.

  Again, no matter.

  McNulty could do it for him.

  “Slave, you are hereby granted permission to, for this day only, ignore the talisman at the top of this staircase. You may enter the long tunnel!”

  The zombie drooled, sensing that it was feeding time.

  “Stay within all the other boundaries I have marked for you, but slay anyone you see sliding down the chute from the root cellar! Slay them and gorge yourself on their brains!”

  90

  “Hurry!” said Malik. “I saw Azalea! Something’s wrong with her … and … and … I really think there is some kind of zombie down here!”

  Zack heard toenails clicking against wood.

  Zipper started grumbling.

  Zack felt hot breath on the back of his neck.

  He swallowed hard.

  Malik was trembling too much to raise his flashlight.

  “Is somebody behind me, Malik?”

  Malik nodded.

  Zack heard another growl.

  Deep. Rumbling. Full of phlegm.

  It wasn’t Zipper.

  Slowly, very slowly, he turned around to see who or what was breathing down his neck.

  91

  “Hurry!” Daphne DuBois screamed at her brother as they rushed into the school building. “We need to find Zack. He’s trying to steal the gold!”

  “Look,” said Eddie. “On the floor. Paw prints.”

  “That means Jennings and his dog came in here.” Her tone brightened. “Follow the tracks! Foolish boy! He doesn’t have much of a head start.”

  They headed up the hall, eyes glued to the paw prints dotting the floor.

  “And, Edward? When we find young Zachary Jennings, will you kindly put one of your bullets in his brain?”

  “Why, it would be my pleasure, Daphne. My absolute pleasure.”

  92

  Zack had never seen anything so gruesomely hideous!

  Pettimore’s zombie stood nearly seven feet tall and had splotches of scraggly matted hair poking out around vein-riddled islands of scalp. His face was a skull wrapped in drum-tight skin. His fang-toothed smile cut across his cheekbones and crept up toward his ears.

  But the worst parts were the bulging eyes. The dead and empty eyes popping out of their sockets.

  Zack stepped backward.

  “Stay back, Zip,” he said without taking his eyes off the blank eyes staring at him.

  Drool dribbled out between the thing’s teeth. A drop splattered on the floor. Zack thought he heard it sizzle when it hit. Like battery acid.

  The zombie was dressed in a tattered blue uniform—mostly shreds and threads. Zack could see his rippling leg muscles, the curling claws at the tips of gangly fingers and toes.

  The jaw creaked open and Zack smelled sewer gas.

  “You are trespassing,” the thing said, his voice deep and rumbling.

  “No … I just came … to get my friend.…”

  “You came to rob my master’s gold.”

  “No, like I said—”

  The crouching thing hopped forward.

  Zack leapt back.

  Suddenly, from the far end of the tunnel, all the way back at the entrance, he heard a thud.

  The zombie heard it, too. Hesitated.

  “Jennings?”

  Snertz.

  The zombie perked up his ears.

  “Where are you? I’m gonna kill you so bad.…”

  One hundred yards away, a flashlight swirled around.

  Phlegm rumbled in the zombie’s massive chest. “Slay anyone I see sliding down the chute,” the thing muttered. “Slay them and gorge on brains!”

  In a blur of blue, the zombie started running up the tunnel, back toward the root cellar.

  93

  Kurt Snertz had to rethink how much he really wanted to kill Zack Jennings.

  Because some kind of giant rat-dog with two glowing red eyeballs was galloping up the long, narrow tunnel toward him.

  He looked at the hole in the wall he had just tumbled through.

  There was something strange burned into the wood above the hole, a black tattoo he hadn’t seen when he’d slid out:

  Snertz had no idea what it meant.

  He didn’t have time to care.

  He just knew he had to scramble back up to the hole as fast as he could, because the thing with the laser-pointer eyes was only fifty yards away!

  94

  “That’s the zombie!” said Malik.

  “Come on, we need to get out of here.” Zack swung the flashlight back and forth. Twenty feet away on either side of the watch wall was the top of a staircase. “Zipper? Keep an eye up the tunnel while we figure which way to go.”

  Zipper hunkered down on all fours in his preferred prepare-to-pounce position.

  “If that thing comes back …”

  “I already figured it out,” said Malik. “The pocket watches on the wall are another code!”

  “Numbers for letters?”

  Malik shook his head. “Semaphore flags!”

  “Huh?”

  “A system for sending messages by placing your arms, two flags, or, in this case, two clock hands in certain positions! They use it on ships all the time—to communicate with other ships.”

  “Stand watch like a sailor should and your prospects shall be very good!” said Zack, remembering the last line from the stone.

  “Exactly.”

  “Malik, tell me you already translated this thing.”

  “Yes. It took me longer than anticipated, however.…”

  “Which staircase?”

  “The one on the left!”

  Zack whistled; Zipper sprang up.

  “Let’s go!”

  They raced down the steps, which were quite steep.

  “Would you like to know how I figured it out?”

  “Sure. Once we get away from that thing.”

  “I don’t think the zombie is allowed to come down these steps.”

  “Rea
lly?”

  “So the coded message would seem to say.”

  Breathing hard, after clomping down thirty-nine steps, they reached a landing.

  “Okay,” said Zack. “Tell me what you figured out.”

  “I propose,” said Malik between gasps for oxygen, “that, whenever we’re presented with a choice, we always head left.”

  “Really?”

  Malik nodded. “Heading left will keep us zombie free.”

  Malik started making gestures, placing his left arm in the six o’clock position, his right at seven. “A.” He raised his right arm to nine o’clock, so it was pointing straight out. “B.” He nudged the right arm up and was about to say, “C,” when Zack interrupted him.

  “Um, maybe you could teach me the whole alphabet later?”

  “Ah. Of course. The message on the wall says …”

  “The new me?” said Zack. “That could be Azalea!”

  “Huh?”

  “Captain Pettimore’s soul somehow got inside Azalea’s body!”

  “Well, Zack, we need to get it out!”

  95

  Kurt Snertz was clawing and clambering his way back up the chute.

  He fought the slant by jamming his butt up against the ceiling and scrabbling forward on his elbows and knees.

  He was only three feet up the tube when he heard a slobbery snarl below him.

  But the thing did not climb in after him.

  Maybe that weird tattoo was some kind of stop sign for giant gophers. Whatever. Kurt was out of the slide and in the room with the dirt floor.

  He was going to live.

  Jennings, too.

  No way was Kurt Snertz sliding back down this coal chute to kill the wuss.

  Not with a rabid gopher with laser-beam eyeballs growling up his butt.

  96

  Zipper, his paws poised on the first step, barked his warning bark up the staircase.

  “He’s back,” said Zack.

  “Is he coming down the stairs?” asked Malik.