I pick myself up, and Pete instantly retracts his legs into himself like a hermit crab.
“He was hiding in here,” I say. “He was in the café and knows something, but he’s not making any sense.”
“Ha!” Smitty laughs. “No change there.” He leans down to grab Pete’s arm and hoists him up in a single movement. Pete springs back against the wall of the bathroom stall, trembling violently. “I’m not the enemy, numbnuts,” Smitty sighs. “Let’s motor.”
We head out of the bathroom and through the janitor’s closet to the door leading into the store, which is now ajar. Pete lingers, wheezing again, and muttering.
“The death came, and it will come again. The death came, and it will come again. The death —”
“Shut him up, will you?” Smitty says to me.
“Like he does anything I say.”
“You found him,” he says. “We’re going in.”
Gripping the screwdriver firmly, Smitty slowly opens the door. The fluorescent light of the store spills into the small room. He listens for a moment, gives me a thumbs-up, then slips inside.
I turn to Pete, who glares at me. I sigh. Fine. Stay here and wait for the death to come and come again.
I follow Smitty, creeping behind shelves of chips and cookies and cigarette lighters, making for where we’d seen the man’s head disappear behind the cash register.
Smitty leaps onto the counter, brandishing the screwdriver.
“Surprise, surprise!” he screams.
A battle cry sounds from under the counter and the man springs up and swipes at Smitty’s feet with a bat. Who knew they had baseball in Scotland? I step back abruptly and the edge of a shelf bites into my back. Smitty has dodged the first swipe, but here comes the second. He jumps into the air as the man’s bat clatters air fresheners, breath mints, and bottles of motor oil onto the ground.
“Stop it!” I know the words are futile before they’ve even left my mouth.
Smitty hurls himself away from the third swipe of the bat and falls against a cabinet of hot pastries. The man hurdles the counter and brings the bat down. Glass and doughnuts fly everywhere as Smitty ducks and skitters backward on his hands through a slick of motor oil that is fast filling the floor. I see my chance. I fling myself at the back of the man’s knees, forcing him off balance and making him skid in the oil. He falls hard, and there is a smack as his head hits the floor. The bat flies out of his hands. I stretch out an arm and make the catch. Dad would have been so proud.
“I said stop!” I hold up the bat, threatening to swing. “Or I’ll flatten you both.” Spit flies out of my mouth in a really attractive way.
From behind the shelves, there is laughter. “She’s not kidding.” Pete pokes his head out.
“Shut it, Albino!” Smitty shouts.
“You shut it!” The man on the floor jabs a finger toward Smitty. “Crazy kid attacking me with a knife. You deserve to be locked up!”
“It was a screwdriver, sir.” I grit my teeth. “And I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He apologizes — don’t you, Smitty?”
Smitty grimaces.
“Don’t you?” I grip the bat tighter.
Smitty rolls his eyes and nods.
“There you go. We’re all friends.” For the first time, I notice a name tag on the man’s shirt, hanging askew, which reads GARETH. I turn to the man, keeping the bat held high just in case. “Gareth? I’m Bobby, this is Smitty, and that’s Pete. We need your help. There are people injured and dying; we don’t know what’s going on and we have to call the police.”
Gareth sits up and rubs his head. “Psycho teenagers are all I need. But if you’ve come looking for a phone, you’ve come to the wrong place.” He pulls himself up against the counter. “The line’s dead.”
“He’s lying!” Smitty is up again.
“Why would I?” Gareth says, not unreasonably. “Think I want to be stuck here, either?” He throws the receiver at Smitty. “Check it yourself. We’re all shafted.” He walks around the counter and sits down on the chair, holding his head in his hands as if checking for cracks.
I figure I can lower the bat. “Do you know what’s happening to everyone?”
Gareth smiles nastily. “The phones died. My boss went up to the café to check what was going on. He comes back and passes out, and I try to help him. I think he’s had a heart attack, don’t I? He’s out cold and not breathing. Dead as a doornail. Next thing I know, he’s grabbing at me and trying to bite.” He gestures to my newly acquired weapon. “He kept the bat under the counter for late-night trouble. Never occurred to him that he might be the trouble. I smashed him to hell and back.”
I look closely at the bat for the first time. There’s a red patch and a clump of hair stuck to the end. My gut twists.
“What did you do to him?”
Gareth taps a cigarette out of a packet. “Hitting him only made him angrier. Nothing much I could do . . .” He lights the cigarette, pockets the lighter, and exhales deeply. “Until I found this.” He picks up an object from the counter. It’s a metal spike attached to a small block of wood, with small pieces of paper skewered to it. Sales receipts. Gareth chuckles. “He never did like balancing the books . . . said they used to do his head in.” A gloop of blood drips from the spike. “Well, they did this time.”
I gulp. “What happened?”
Gareth fixes me with his dark stare. “He fell on it.” He thrusts the spike. “Up through the eye, popped like a grape.”
“Cool!” Smitty says.
“No,” I mutter. “That’s horrible.”
“Hey, it’s not so bad,” Smitty says. “We just ran over our teacher, remember?”
“Which one?” Pete asks.
“Mr. Taylor,” I say, numb.
“Yes!” Pete claps his hands in delight.
I look at Gareth. “So what did you do next?”
He shrugs. “Tried the phone. Line was dead. Went up to the café. Everyone was dead. Didn’t hang around to see if they’d come back to life. Came back here and locked the body in the storage cupboard.” He flicks a finger at a door in the corner. “Just in case.”
“Didn’t you even think to look for a phone in the café?” Smitty’s face curls with scorn.
“Yeah, I hung around to go crazy like my boss,” Gareth says. “Great idea.”
“So we just wait here, right?” I say. “This is a gas station; people must be in and out all the time.”
Gareth laughs. “This isn’t your average day, lassie.”
“He’s right,” Smitty adds. “Have you seen anyone arrive since we got here?” He looks up toward the café. “Either it’s the snow, or —”
“Or whatever’s going on here is going on everywhere.”
Nobody speaks. I think we’re all ignoring what I just said, but it’s out there all the same.
I chance a smile. “Gareth, I’m thinking you’re about the same age as all of us added up. Do you have a car?”
Gareth shakes his head. “Not today.” His face reddens. “I got a lift.”
I brighten. “Fine. So they’ll be back to pick you up at the end of your shift, won’t they? We wait.”
“Or we hot-wire a car,” Smitty says. “Or drive the bus.”
Gareth looks exasperated. “Have you seen the weather?”
“Let’s at least try!” Smitty shouts.
Before Gareth can answer, an engine roars into life outside and a large shadow lurches around the trees, heading toward the gas pumps. It’s the school bus.
“Score!” Smitty shouts. “Hello, Mr. Mean Machine All-Terrain Bus Driver!”
We scramble to the window and watch as the bus leaves the road and mounts the bank. Narrowly missing the last of the sycamores, it careers down toward us.
�
��He’s going too fast,” I say. “Why’s he going so fast?”
As the words come out, I see why.
Following the bus are people, stumbling through the snow. Arms out, heads lolling, feet dragging . . .
“And to complete the introductions, Gareth,” says Smitty, holding out his hand toward the approaching mob, “may I present to you the rest of our class from All Souls’ High School.”
It’s them all right. Some more animated now than I’ve ever seen before.
The bus is at the entrance to the gas station. Skidding on the icy ground, it heads past the pumps and directly toward the store.
“Slow down!” I scream.
Smitty grabs me. “He’s not going to.”
As the bus roars toward us with a sickening inevitability, I’m only aware of Pete’s white hair ducking behind a shelf and Smitty’s hand in the small of my back, pushing me to the ground. There’s an almighty crash and everything collapses, burying us in an ocean of chips, cookies, and cheap store shelves.
I close my eyes and wait for the death to come.
For a lovely moment time is suspended and all is still under the debris. Quiet, dark, warm, and strangely comforting, like a cocoon.
I can smell motor oil, sugary doughnuts, and a sharper, sweeter scent. Raspberries? Something tickles my nose . . . I open my eyes and blow a straggle of hair out of my face. Not my hair, Smitty’s. His head is buried in the crook of my neck, and he’s out cold. He uses raspberry shampoo? What a girl. I chuckle to myself. Kind of embarrassing how he’s lying across me, though, trapping one of my arms. His weight is heavy across my chest, and one of his arms is almost cradling my head. Lying but not moving. That isn’t good. I feel a flutter of panic and fling out my free arm.
The pile of debris groans threateningly, a shaft of light cuts through the fug, and the world comes rushing back into focus. Someone is shouting, there’s glass breaking, and an alarm is shrieking loud enough to wake the dead. I try to move but I’m pinned to the ground, partly by Smitty, and partly by something heavier with a sharp edge that is causing a throbbing pain across my legs. At least I can still feel them.
“Smitty!” I try to shake his shoulder with my free hand. “Are you OK?”
“Eh?” He wakes with a jolt, gasping for air like a beached fish. “What’s happening?”
Before I can answer, he springs backward off me like I’m on fire, causing a tumble of items to clatter around me. The cocoon is truly breached.
“Quickly!”
I twist my head and see Pete, standing above, his clothes oddly shredded, as if he’s been dragged through barbwire, his hand outstretched. He has a silver halo, like an angel. Then, as something catches his attention and he turns to the window, I realize it’s a piece of shelving unit sticking out of his head. Blood is seeping through his white hair.
“They’re coming!”
I follow his frantic gaze. Through the dust, I see dark shapes moving on the other side of what used to be the store window, arms reaching in a horrible welcome . . .
“My legs,” I mutter.
In a second, the weight is lifted and I am being dragged from the debris by Smitty. The place looks like a bomb site. There is the bus, its front end wedged into the store like a dog with its head stuck down a rabbit hole. It’s covered in glass and doughnut and detritus. The driver is slumped at the wheel, and Alice’s white face is at the windshield, silently screaming at us, drowned out by the alarm.
We scramble around to the other side of the bus and there’s Gareth, the end of the cigarette still hanging out of his mouth, baseball bat in hand, swinging blindly at dust.
“Come on!” he shouts at the approaching shadows. “Show me what you’ve got!”
The bus engine revs and Alice appears at the open door. “Hurry!” she screams, beckoning frantically.
We dodge the deranged Gareth and clamber onto the bus.
“Wait!” Pete says. “I’ll be a second. Don’t leave without me.” He leaps off the bus and scampers back into the store.
“Sit down and hold on tight,” the driver shouts — slurring like he’s drunk — and revs the engine again.
“He woke up,” Alice says. “They started coming. He woke up just in time to drive away.” She stares into the distance behind her. “Oh my god, it’s Em . . .” She moves to a window. “Em is out there — Em!” She hits the glass with the palm of her hand. “Over here! Libby’s out there, too! And Shanika . . . Oh god!” She turns back to me. “We have to help them before those monsters eat them.”
I stare at the shambling figures. “I think they are the monsters, Alice.”
Alice slowly faces her frenemies. Em is clawing the air in front of her as she makes her way toward us, stamping each step like a runway model trying to extinguish a cigarette. Shanika’s eyes bulge out of her face as she gnashes her teeth and clumsily climbs over a freezer cabinet that has rolled out into the driveway. Libby’s head lolls to one side, and black blood oozes out of the sides of her mouth. Not exactly class portrait worthy. But like the rest of the mob behind them, they have a direction, and they keep on coming.
“It’s horrible!” Alice cries. “They want to kill us!” Her eyes narrow. “And Shanika’s got my Candy Couture bag, the bitch! Drive!” she says to the driver. “Run them over!”
“We can’t go without Pete!” I shout. “Or him!” I point at Gareth, who is looking less sure of his batting skills the nearer the mob gets.
“One’s useless and the other’s crazy,” says Smitty, throwing me into a seat. “Put the pedal to the metal, mister!” he shouts to the driver and lunges for the door lever.
“No!” I cry, forcing myself out of my seat again. The doors close, but as they do an arm sticks in the doorway and pulls them back. Pete, still with metal halo and now carrying a flat black box, flings himself onto the steps.
“You mentalist!” Smitty shouts. “Get up here!”
Gareth appears behind Pete and jumps on board. “Drive! Drive! Drive!”
The driver puts his foot down as Gareth and Pete scramble down the aisle. I dive back into my seat, wedging my knees up in front of me, and say a silent prayer to anyone who happens to be listening. The bus surges backward through the store window the way it came in, then stops in a screech of metal against metal. I clench my eyes closed and will us to keep going, but I am obviously praying to the wrong god. Come on, come on.
A thumping begins, like a sardonic hand clap for the driver’s efforts. Thump, thump, thump, all around us. I open my eyes and dare to look. Hands are slapping the bus: small hands reaching up, adult hands smacking the windows. The bus jolts once more, there’s a crunch of gears, and we’re reversing again, then edging forward, nearly free from whatever is holding us back.
“You hit a pump, you idiot!” Gareth shouts, a few rows behind me. “There’s petrol everywhere.”
Sure enough, behind us there is now a fountain of gasoline spurting twenty feet into the air, spraying the shambling figures.
“Hold it!” Smitty snatches the glowing cigarette butt from Gareth’s lips.
“Hey!” Gareth protests.
Smitty leaps up to the hatch in one easy movement.
“What are you doing?” I yell after him.
“Wait for my call!” Smitty is up on the roof before anyone can stop him. I’m close behind, hands scrabbling for a hold on the hatch, feet slipping on the seats below.
“Are you totally whacked?” I shout. I know what he’s going to do, and part of me needs to stop him. But only part of me.
“Always wanted to do this.” He winks, takes a drag from the cigarette, and flicks it into the air. I watch as it falls, slowly, beautifully, to the ground below.
“Move!” He shoves me back down the hatch, practically falling on top of me for the second time that afternoon. �
��Go!” he cries, and the bus jerks forward, wheels spinning, engine roaring. There’s a whoomp as the air pressure changes. Glass flies in from the back of the bus, and flames are all around us. I stay low and cling to the seat as the bus races forward with new life. Out of the corner of my eye, I see figures dancing in the fire, balls of flame stumbling, falling to the ground, and staying there. As the bus rounds a corner onto the road, a huge explosion shakes the earth. The light is too bright to bear. I bury my face in the headrest. Keep driving, keep driving.
The engine screams as the road inclines. We’re slowing. I peep out between shaking hands; there’s a steep drop to our right. As we reach the brow of the hill, the bus almost seems to hover.
“The wheels are spinning!” Gareth shouts.
The driver’s body collapses over the steering wheel. The engine cuts and, slowly, the bus starts to slide backward.
“He’s fainted!” I yell, turning to Gareth. “Take the wheel!”
“Take it yourself!” Gareth shouts back, bracing himself against a seat.
From the back, Alice starts to wail. “What’s wrong with you?” she shrieks at Gareth. “We’re going to go over the edge!”
“I don’t drive, all right!” Gareth shouts.
Smitty lunges at him. “You don’t drive? What kind of shit adult doesn’t drive?”
He rushes to the front and pulls the driver off his seat. For some totally unknown, insane reason, I jump into the seat. I can’t drive a car, let alone a bus. You don’t have to, my dad’s voice says to me. You just have to stop a bus. Brake pedal in the middle, remember?
I shoot out a hopeful foot and stamp the pedal to the floor. The bus skids on a patch of ice, veering close to the edge of the drop. Dangerously close.
“It’s not working!” I cry.
Smitty grabs the wheel and begins to twist it helplessly.
Alice screams as the bus picks up momentum. I’m thinking we are toast.
Suddenly Pete is at my side. “Let me,” he says.
“What?”
“I can do it,” he urges. He’s still wearing the shelf-unit halo, but a piece has broken off and now it looks like a wafer planted in a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Undead (9780545473460) Page 4