by Ty Drago
Flailing and clawing at her cheeks and forehead, Dead Nurse managed to pull some of them free, crushing them between her gray, lifeless fingers. But the others — well, they started boring into her, their little bodies thrashing about as they dug into her rotting flesh, eating eagerly.
Within moments they'd disappeared beneath her skin.
Corpses don’t scream often, but when they do it's pretty horrible.
Dead Nurse screamed.
She threw herself against one of the molded plastic seats, her stolen body spasming. I didn't think her kind felt pain, though I'd sometimes seen them act as if they did. What drove it, I thought, was terror. The Malum don't die easily or often. And when faced with the reality of their own end — they kind of freak out.
This one freaked out big time.
She smashed into the bus's rear door before spinning and slamming one of her arms against the metal wall hard enough to break the bone. I actually heard it crack. Then she staggered blindly forward along the aisle, moving toward me in shuffling steps that reminded me of the zombie she resembled. I raised my pocketknife, ready to defend myself — but I didn’t have to.
One of Dead Nurse’s feet, jammed into a big, chunky white shoe, came down on Dead Bus Driver's skull. The polished bone crunched and caved in around her foot, revealing the maggots that were still inside, maybe finishing off the last of the dude's brain.
These latched onto her ankle, chowing down.
Her foot was gone — just gone — in seconds. Just before she toppled backward, she looked my way, and her eyes met mine. Well, one of them anyway. Her other eye had already been devoured, eaten along with half her face. I could see the white bone of her skull beneath. Her remaining eye glared at me, full of hatred and fear.
Then she fell onto her back, and they were all over her.
The rest didn't take long.
Helene and I watched in a kind of nauseated fascination as the maggots set about consuming Dead Nurse's writing body which, after a time, stopped writhing.
All the while, Dave was driving and yelling, “What's going on? What's happening back there?” He sounded like every school bus driver I'd ever known.
“My God ...” Helene breathed.
“Yeah,” I said.
That's when the pain hit me.
Yelling, I grabbed at my foot and, over balancing, toppled backward onto my butt. Gritting my teeth and hissing like a snake, I looked down at my sneaker —
— and saw that a single maggot had eaten through it.
How this one had missed Dead Nurse's gravy train was a mystery. But while his buds had been dining on two week-old cadaver, this guy had decided to make a meal of my canvas shoe — maybe hooking onto it when I’d done my kick. Now he'd managed to gnaw his way through the rough outer shell and reach the juicy center, by which I mean Yours Truly's foot.
“Pain” doesn't even begin to describe it. The maggot wasn't just eating me, it was boring in, trying to tunnel its way under my flesh, giving him full and unhampered access to a Will Ritter Buffett.
“Grab it!” I screamed to Helene. “Quick! Pull it out!”
But she didn't. Instead she jumped over and ran to the rear of the bus, where Dead Nurse still lay.
“What' goin' on?” the Burgermeister exclaimed.
I screamed as I watched the maggot almost disappear through the hole it had made in my sneaker — and into the bare foot underneath.
Then it stopped.
Just stopped.
The pain didn't stop with it, at least not completely. But it dialed back enough that I was able to contain my panic and examine the limp tail end of the little white worm.
Then, slowly, I lifted my head and looked at Helene.
She stood high over Dead Nurse, her feet balanced on two bus seats at opposite sides of the center aisle while, right below her, both Dead Nurse and the maggots munching on her had gone still.
Sticking out from between the girl's lips was a thin silver cylinder.
The dog whistle.
“Deader dropped it,” she said, talking around the thing.
It took me a few more seconds to catch up with what had happened. Then, using one trembling hand to wipe away the sweat that stung my eyes, I reached out with the other, grabbed the creature in my shoe with two fingers — and pulled.
It slid right out. I'd been half afraid its body would break or something, leaving me with part of a worm stuck in my foot. I didn't even want to think about how Ian McDonald, the Undertakers' medic, would handle that one! But aside from a stomach-twisting slippery feeling, the maggot came out with no problem.
It didn’t look dead — just kind of asleep. Trust me, I know the difference.
So I dropped it, bent my knee, and awkwardly stomped the thing flat.
Behind me, still driving the bus, the Burgermeister yelled, “Will one of you guys answer me? What's going on? Will, you okay?”
“I'm okay,” I replied.
“So am I,” Helene added dryly. “Thanks for asking!”
“You're always okay,” Dave called back. “Will's the one who can't go ten minutes without sticking his foot in another mess!”
Helene laughed, pocketing the whistle. “Can't argue with that!”
I pulled myself up to a standing position, testing my “nibbled” foot. A little bit of pain. Hardly any blood. Could've been a lot worse.
I met Helene's eyes. “How’d you know?”
“What?” she asked. “You mean: how’d I know blowing the whistle would stop the maggots? I didn’t … not for sure. But that deader must’ve pulled the whistle out for some reason, and since she’d wanted to collect those … things, anyway, I figured it was worth a shot!”
It had been a smart move. A really smart move.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Saved your butt,” she replied with a grin. “Must be Tuesday.”
I took the opportunity to look around. Our bus was cruising down Spring Garden Street, heading east, toward the Delaware River — the same direction from which it had come. Good thinking, on Dave’s part. My big friend was turning out to be a pretty solid driver. Spring Garden has two eastbound lanes and he was keeping us more or less in one of them.
Better still: there wasn't a Corpse in sight.
Well, except for Dead Nurse and what little was left of Dead Bus Driver.
“Nice job, Burgermeister,” I said, meaning it. “You lost 'em.”
“More like outran 'em … for now,” he replied. “But we're in a school bus, dude! Driving on an empty road in the middle of the night. We stick out like a sore thumb!”
He was right. Corpses weren't stupid, and they knew how to use cell phones. They'd be coming after us.
We needed to go after them first.
“Any idea where we're headed, guys?” Dave asked. “Can't keep this up forever.”
“Hang on,” I said.
Then I stepped around Helene and went over to Dead Nurse, whose motionless body lay sprawled across the bus's center aisle.
Her face was gone, eaten away by those freaky maggots. One or two of them lay limp on the floor nearby. These I stomped on, squashing them. But the rest had already burrowed under her skin. I could see some of them; they looked like motionless lumps under her purple flesh. Like the one that had been chowing down on me, they'd apparently gone to “sleep” when Helene had blown the dog whistle.
I had my pocketknife out, its Taser ready as a precaution. I couldn’t know for sure what damage those larvae had done to this deader. Corpses don't die easy. In fact, they don't die at all — not unless you completely destroy their host bodies. Dead Nurse wasn't truly dead. Heck, I wasn't even sure that the bus driver, in all his many pieces, was forever hosed. But if the maggots had chewed through Dead Nurse's brain or spinal cord, then she might be trapped inside her host, helpless.
Then again, she might be faking, hoping to lure us close.
I nudged her shoulder with my foot, ready to zap her if she twitched. Sh
e didn't. Her body seemed every bit as lifeless as it looked. But then, as I watched, her head turned my way and she fixed me with hate-filled eyes — or I should say eye — since the other was nothing but a disgustingly empty and ragged socket.
“Hi, there,” I said. “Can you talk?”
She didn't reply.
I turned to motion Helene closer, but I needn't have bothered. She was right by my side. As always.
“Got the whistle?” I asked her.
She nodded and held it up.
To Dead Nurse, I said, “I'm gonna ask you again. If you can talk, then I got a reason to keep you around. If you can't ... well then my friend here's gonna blow that little whistle of yours. I’m figuring that’ll wake up those maggots. Then we're just gonna drive around while they turn you into a pile of bones. Probably won't take very long. Know what happens to you if your host body gets completely trashed?”
I was totally guessing about the “wake them up” part. But, in this case, I must have guessed right, because the Corpse glared up at me and replied, “I can talk.”
“Good for you,” I replied, trying to hide my relief. The maggots had done just enough damage to partially paralyze her, but hadn’t quite destroyed her speech centers. It was a lucky break in a night that hadn't seen too many of them. This whole school bus mess would have been for nothing if we didn't bag a talking cadaver.
“Cool,” I told her. “I want to know where Steiger's lab is. I want to know where he keeps all those kids he's collected and what he wants them for. You're gonna tell me that. First time I think you're lying or holding back, my friend blows the whistle on you. Got it?”
Corpses are cowards. Oh, they act all brave in combat, but most of that's because they don't really think they can be killed. But once you hold death up and show it to them — if you know what I mean — they do the deader version of crapping their pants. This one was no exception.
“Please ...” she said, her voice a cracked gurgle. One or more of the maggots had been nibbling on her already decomposing vocal chords. “I don't want to be destroyed.”
Tell that to Michael and Robert, I thought, but didn't say. This wasn't the time for revenge.
That would come later.
“Who does?” I replied. “Where’s Steiger?”
Dead Nurse's one eye — milky with death but still weirdly functional — moved from me to Helene, who held up the dog whistle and, smiling thinly, placed it between her lips. Instantly, the deader said, “He's leased a large building on Spring Garden Street, between 18th and 19th. An old commercial garage that we converted.”
18th Street was west of here. “You’re lying,” I told her. “This bus came from the east. We saw it.” Beside me, Helene puffed up her cheeks around the whistle.
“No!” the deader wailed. “I’m not lying! On the way to pick up our people, we had to detour around the block because of the emergency vehicles!”
That actually made sense, given how many cop cars and fire trucks we’d seen on the street.
Helene and I swapped nods. Then she took the whistle out of her mouth and yelled over her shoulder, “Yo, Burgermeister! Turn us around!”
“What?” he called from the front of the bus.
“Around!” she repeated. “Turn us around!”
“But they're chasing us!” he exclaimed. “A whole bunch of them!”
I glanced out the bus's rear window and saw that he right: something like twenty deaders — all dressed in medical garb — were sprinting down Spring Garden, maybe two blocks behind us. It was a crazy sight, and would look really suspicious to anyone who saw them.
“They want us,” I remarked. Then to Dead Nurse: “Your peeps are drawing a lot of attention, even at this time of night. What's on this bus that they need so bad?”
She didn't answer, at least not until Helene put the whistle between her lips again. “Me!” she moaned in terror. “I'm Dr. Steiger's personal assistant! I can't be allowed to be captured!”
“Well, oops for you,” I said.
“Dave!” Helene called toward the front. “We gotta turn around!”
The Burgermeister muttered a few choice words. Then, at the next light, he swerved right and then spun the wheel hard left. Big yellow school buses don't U-turn well, and this one was worse than most. For a second or two, about halfway around, it felt kind of like we went up on two wheels. The notion of this motorized monster flipping over on its side scared me bad.
If I only knew —
“Okay!” he shouted back. “We're heading west ... right into those wormbags!”
Helene yelled, “Well, don't stop! Go right through 'em!”
“Oh, yeah! That'll end well!”
I turned back to Dead Nurse. “What's Steiger want with the twins?”
She didn't answer.
I sighed. “I've had enough. Helene, blow the whistle.”
“No!” the deader screamed. “He's been studying the phenomenon you call the Sight!”
That much we'd figured. The Corpses would love to know why some kids develop the ability to see through their Masks, while the rest of the world remained endlessly blind. “Why twins?”
Dead Nurse said, “Identical twins are identical down to their genes. He uses one of each pair as a control ... the subject of the experiment who remains unaffected so that it can be used for comparison.”
So, Mad Corpse Doctor had been doing something to Michael, while leaving Robert alone so that he could measure the difference. Or maybe Robert had been the Guinea pig and Michael the “control.” It didn't matter.
Either way, both boys were dead.
Because of Steiger.
I struggled to contain a fresh wave of anger. “He's trying to nail down how Seers get their Eyes?”
The Corpse shook her head so hard that I thought it might snap off her neck. Terror is a strange expression for a dead face to wear. “No! No! Cure it!”
I blinked. “Cure it? You mean ... he's trying to cure the Sight?”
“He has cured the Sight, you stupid child!”
The words hit me like a shock of cold water.
“That's impossible!” Helene snapped.
“No,” Dead Nurse replied, a small trace of smugness seeping through her fear. “Not for Dr. Steiger. He's one of the greatest minds the Malum have ... a true genius! He's found a way to do it, a formula to counterbalance whatever genetic code causes your perverse ability to see through our covers!”
Suddenly, Dave yelled from up front, “Head's up, guys! Here it comes!”
A second later, dead people started tumbling past the windows.
Oddly, I didn't really feel much in the way of impacts as the big bus plowed its way through Steiger's underlings. But as more and more broken bodies in lab coats and medical scrubs were knocked to one side or another, I heard the Burgermeister punctuate each new hit with a cry of “Ouch!” and “Blammo!” and “That'll leave a mark!”
Then one of them got smart enough to jump up in the instant before impact. He — or she, I didn't really know which — slammed into the bus's windshield hard enough to crack it before rolling up onto the roof. Helene and I listened as the Corpse bounced along the top of the bus. I kept one eye on the windows and the back door, watching to see him or her fall and hit the pavement behind us.
He or she didn't.
“Uh oh,” Helene said.
“We're through!” Dave yelled from the front, pumping the air with his fist! “Don't know how many we slammed, and I don't wanna think about what the grill looks up, but we're in the clear.”
Not quite, I thought.
“Watch the windows,” I told Helene. She nodded and readied her water pistol.
I turned to Dead Nurse, whose fear had changed to triumph. “What's the matter, Undertaker?” she rasped. “Losing control of the situation? My people won't stop, you know. No matter how many you incapacitate, Dr. Steiger will only send more. He had nearly a hundred at his command.”
“Lucky him,” I sai
d. “Tell me about the maggots. What are they for?”
At the mention of the critters that were, at that very moment, sleeping inside her stolen body, the Corpse's grin faltered. “A side experiment. A genetic mutation that Dr. Steiger created as a way to rid ourselves of unneeded organic tissue.”
“Like old host bodies?”
She met my eyes. Her stare was glacial. “Like subjects we don't need any longer.”
I leaned in close. “Are you telling me,” I said through clenched teeth, “that Steiger's gonna feed the kidnapped twins to those ... things?”
“Of course,” she whispered. Then, in a singsong voice that reminded me horribly of Steiger's, she added, “The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle in your snout.”
Without turning away from her, I asked, “Helene?”
“Yeah, Will?”
Dead Nurse cooed, “They eat your eyes. They eat your nose. They eat the jelly between your toes!”
I said flatly, “Do it.”
Suddenly, the Corpse's face twisted in terror. “What? No! I told you everything!”
“You told me enough,” I said, and the absolute lack of pity inside me scared me worse than anything I'd seen that night.
Helene blew the dog whistle.
What happened after that didn't take very long — it only seemed to. Within thirty seconds, Dead Nurse's stolen body was literally falling apart on the floor. The maggots ate everything, and they ate it fast. It was terrible to watch. After a minute or so, the nurse's uniform lay empty except for a bunch of loose bones.
For a second or two, though, something remained — vague and transparent and utterly inhuman. This was the Malum, the true invader inside the stolen corpse. And, without its fleshly shield to protect it, the ghost-like creature shriveled up and died before our eyes, leaving nothing behind but the squirming products of Steiger's “side experiment.”
“Blow it again,” I told Helene, who did it. Her face, I noticed, looked every bit as bloodless as mine felt.
Once again, the whistle worked. The maggots, their bodies so fat from feasting that they could barely move anyway, went compel still.
Then I calmly and methodically stomped them all flat.