Undead (9780545473460) (2 page)

The screech comes again, closer this time. I stare into the snow, eyes straining. A vague shape is moving in the whiteness.

“Move!” Smitty is behind me now, at the driver's seat. He slams the lever and the door unfolds shut, missing me by a hair's breadth.

“Hey!” I protest, then fall back in shock as the screech appears at the door, slapping hard and fast, trying to get in. Through the glass I see baby blue and yellow, a bundle of blond hair, and shiny pink nails scraping the glass.

“Open the door!” I shout at Smitty.

“Are you crazy?”

“Now!”

When he doesn't obey, I scrabble up the steps and hit the lever myself before he can stop me.

The door opens, and a manic figure propels itself into the bus.

“Shut the door!” it screams.

I go for the lever but Smitty is way ahead of me this time and the door slides shut again.

The figure lies panting on the steps. It's Alice Hicks. She lifts her head, black mascara dripping down her pretty face.

“Dead!” she screams. “Everybody's dead!”

Alice Hicks looks good even when she is lying on the floor crying. When
I
cry — which admittedly is about twice a century — I look utterly destroyed. Beet-red face. Tiny little pig eyes and runny snot nose. It's a genuine talent, looking pretty while traumatized. So if this is for real, I won't just be shocked, I'll be
impressed
.

“Dead?” I say. “What are you talking about?”

“Your friends are dead?” Smitty leans back casually on the driver's seat. “Have you only just noticed?”

“It's true!” Alice's voice trembles through the sobs. “In the café. Go and look if you don't believe me!”

“All right.” Smitty springs up from his seat.

“No!” Alice says, raising herself to face him. “You can't go out there!” Her legs buckle and she collapses onto the steps again.

“Why not?” Smitty won't be put off.

“Get back!” she screams.

Smitty holds his hands over his ears, his face in exaggerated pain.

But there's something about the way she's slumped on the steps — the dirty, wet steps — wearing her rah-rah red pep squad skirt. This is genuine — at least,
she
believes it.

I nudge Smitty out of the way and offer her a hand. “Come and sit up here. Did you hurt yourself?”

“Keep him away from the door!” Alice wails, bracing herself in the stairwell, looking surprisingly immovable in spite of the flow of tears and the baby blue ski jacket.

“OK, he's sitting down over there.” I point at a seat a couple of rows back and look at Smitty.

“I am?” Smitty says.

“You are.” I grit my teeth, like some kind of genuine hard-ass. Smitty makes a face but — remarkably — obeys. Even more remarkably, Alice lets me help her into a seat. “So take a breath” — I take one of my own — “and tell us what you saw.”

“I told you, everyone is
dead
,” she repeats, jaw clenched. “I was in the café, I went to use the ladies' room — yes, even
I
have to go sometimes, Smitty,” she snarls before he has the chance to say anything. “I came back and everyone was sort of lying across the tables . . . like they were asleep. At first I thought it was some lame joke” — her brown eyes flash with scorn — “I mean, hello,
très
embarrassant
, but then I went up to Libby and Em and Shanika, and I shook Em and she fell onto the floor.” Alice's face crumples and here come the tears again. “She wasn't breathing. No one was breathing!”

“Are you sure?” I have to ask.

“Of course I'm sure!”

“How did it happen?” I crouch down beside her. It looks like I'm being sympathetic, but really my legs suddenly feel wobbly. “Were they sick or something?”

“I'm supposed to know?” Alice yells. “They were all just lying there, the whole class!”

“What about everyone else? The waiters, other people in the restaurant?”

“All dead.” She shudders. “On the floor, on the chairs, behind the counters.”

“Mr. Taylor and Ms. Fawcett?” I turn to Smitty, like he's suddenly the sane one. “We have to find them.”

“No!” screams Alice. “Mr. Taylor was there, I saw him, standing by the sandwiches.”

Phew.
World order is restored. “Has he called for help?”

Alice shakes her head. “I ran up to him. He turned around . . . his face was
yuck
. His eyes were weird, all red . . .”

“He has pathetic Man-Flu,” Smitty says.

“More than that!” She pauses for effect. “He was dead, too.”

“What?” I say.

“He grabbed at me,” Alice says. “I ran . . . out . . . he tried to get me.”

“You're so full of it!” Smitty squeals with laughter. “What's today's date, April Fools'? We're supposed to believe that everyone's tombstoned from instant food poisoning, and Mr. T has risen again and is trying to kill you?” He jumps up and holds out his arms, moaning.

“Believe it!” Alice thumps her fists on the armrests. “Do you really think I'd even bother to speak to you two unless everyone else was dead?”

I raise an eyebrow. “She has a point.”

“She has a nerve, more like,” Smitty says, his head shaking.

“Fine.” Alice stands up carefully, her pretty retroussé nose in the air. “Go and check. But don't blame me if you end up dead.”

Smitty steps up.

“Wait.” Before I know it, I've planted myself firmly between them. Not a great place to be, but right now, very necessary. “We need to call the police, an ambulance, don't we? We should stay here until they come.”

Alice's face widens in horror. “My phone . . . it's with my stuff! Oh my
god
!” Fresh tears. “I left my Candy Couture bag on the table!”

“Oh, the tragedy!” Smitty joins in, girlying it up. “The dead people might be . . . touching it!”

“Shut up! You know nothing!” Alice cries. “It's one of a kind!”

Enough of this. I have a damn phone. I rush to my seat and snatch my backpack down from the shelf. The phone's in the inside pocket. I've barely used it since my mother bought it for me when we arrived in the UK. What was the point? No friends to text me in this dumb, damp country.

Now it might just save my life.

Searching for signal
. . . the screen reads. I hold it up to the window.

“Not working?” Smitty bounces past. “When did you get it, the Dark Ages?” He pulls a smart phone out of his back pocket. Nice. He probably stole it. “Now, this little baby will pick up a signal on the moon.” He stares at the screen. For a little too long.

“But not here?” Alice is triumphant.

“Give it a minute,” he says. “We are in the middle of Nowheresville.” He presses a few buttons, like that will help. “Shiznuts. What's wrong with it?”

“No reception.” My teeth are gritted again; I'm going to grind them down to pegs at this rate. I toss my phone-a-saurus onto the seat. “We have to find the driver. He's probably got a radio.” I turn to Alice. “Did you see him when you were outside?”

Alice cocks her head to one side in a way she clearly thinks is supercute. “What, you mean when I was running for my life through a snow blizzard? Er, that would be a
no
.”

I don't bother with a reply — mainly because I can't spare the brainpower — and rush down the bus to the back window. The snow has eased off a little. I can just make out the shape of a car. “We need to go check behind the bus. I think that's where the driver went.”

“See ya.” Alice sits in a seat halfway up the aisle. “I'm not moving.”

“I am,” says Smitty. He's at the door before I can react. “You stay,” he shouts at me. “In case
Malice
here gets the idea of shutting me out.” He hits the lever for the door and runs lightly down the steps.

“Be careful.” I reach the top of the steps.

He grins and grabs at his own neck, like some ghoul is dragging him off. The snow crunches as he disappears around the front of the bus.

“Shut the door!” Alice hisses.

“Give him a second. He'll be right back with the driver.”

Fat flakes of snow are falling rapidly again. The wind has dropped and the air is so full of silence it almost hurts. The patch of red
whatever
on the ground is still there, but it's diluted pink now, with new snow beginning to cover it. My ears strain, and my hand hovers over the door lever, ready to push it shut if anything leaps out of the whiteness.

“Hey!”

I jump and bash my knuckles against the steering wheel.

“Give us a hand, Newbie!”

Smitty's voice. I climb down the first step. “What's the matter?”

“Come here!”

“Don't.” Alice rises in her seat, but doesn't step into the aisle. “Stay!”

“He needs help.” I linger on the steps.

“Oi!” Smitty appears at the door, and I jolt back onto the top step on my behind.
Stylish.
He looks up at me. “It's the driver. I can't carry him on my own.”

“Carry him?” I stand, resisting the urge to rub my tailbone.

“Quick!”

And he's gone. I fix Alice with my steeliest of steelies.

“Do not lock us out.”

“You've got two minutes,” Alice shouts back.

I step out into the white, onto the path trodden in the snow by my classmates. Avoiding the pink, I step off the path and immediately sink up to my knees. Awesome. It's just snow. Steadying myself against the side of the bus, I place my foot in the first of Smitty's footprints, following them. The snow is shallower on the road and I move more easily along the length of the vehicle and round to the back, where a Mini Cooper with a British flag–painted roof is wedged against the bus's bumper.

“Here.” Smitty's head pops up from behind the car. “Help me drag him.”

I get closer.
Oh god.
The driver is lying motionless in the snow, his legs underneath the car.

“Is he OK?” Stupid question.

“Not a scratch on him,” Smitty says. “Except for his hand.”

He holds up the driver's right wrist. There's a deep gash, and syrupy blood is pumping slowly down his arm. A hot, giddying wave of adrenaline flushes through me.

“We need to bandage him — quickly.” My hand shoots up to my neck for my scarf. My mother's best cashmere scarf, actually. Pale lilac with blue stripes. She'd tucked it round my neck the morning we left, in place of a hug. I don't even like the scarf, but the look on her face was so out of character — like she was actually going to
miss
me for once — that I'd kept it on. But there are other things at stake now. I unwrap it quickly and wind it around the driver's forearm as tightly as I dare. I have nothing to fasten it with.

“Here.” Smitty drops a small, black circle into my hand. It's a pin — a badge — with a laughing skull and the words
Death Throes
on it. The name of a band. I hope. I fix the scarf in place.

“Should we move him?” I look up at Smitty, and my eyes fill with snowflakes.

“Yeah. He'll freeze otherwise.” He hunkers down and starts pulling the guy up, somehow. “Luckily for us he's a short-arse. I'll hoist him and you get under his other arm.”

We shuffle upright, and suddenly the driver's heavy on my shoulder and I'm breathing in the uncomfortable warm, sweet scent of middle-aged-man sweat. He lets out a moan.

“Good, you're awake,” says Smitty. “Mister, we need to move you. Just put one foot in front of the other and we'll do the rest.”

We stagger forward, like an odd, three-headed monster, lurching and sliding through the snow. Finally, we make it back to the door of the bus.

It is closed.

“Malice!” Smitty bangs on the glass. “Let us in, you bloody moose!”

“Come on, Alice!” I cast a nervous glance toward the café. The falling snow is thinning, and I can make out the entrance again. There are dead people in there. I can't see them, but I don't want to. “Hurry up and open the door!”

Alice does not appear. The driver grunts, gesturing to a small, metal flap on the side of the coach. With numb, wet fingers I open it, and push the button I find there. The door opens with a
swoosh
of relief.

“I'm gonna kill her,” growls Smitty.

“Get in line,” I tell him.

Between us we manage to half push the driver to the top of the steps and help him into his chair, where he punches the door lever closed with his good hand and passes out.

“Is he dead?”

A voice from on high. For a reason that I cannot immediately fathom, Alice is standing on top of two seats halfway down the aisle, holding a pair of binoculars.

“You shut the door, you cow!” starts Smitty.

“Be grateful,” Alice says. “Found these in Ms. Fawcett's stuff.” She waves the binoculars at us. “I was being lookout.” She points to the roof of the bus. There's an escape hatch. “You can see into the café,” Alice says. “No one's moving.”

Smitty is down the aisle pronto. “Here, gimme.” He snatches the binoculars from her and scrambles up to the hatch.

“Ew, your hands are all sticky,” Alice says. “Oh my god, it's blood!” she squeals, jumping down and wiping her hand on a seat. “Get it off me!” she screams. “Is it his?” She points to the driver.

“Yep.” My voice is hard. “He hurt his wrist and he's unconscious. We need to get him some help. Like now.”

“Heads up!” Smitty shouts from the hatch. “Here comes Mr. Taylor.”

“No way,” Alice says.

“For real?” I climb up on the seats, using the storage shelves on either side to pull myself up to the hatch. I poke my head out into the cold air and vie for space.

“He's coming out.” Smitty holds fast to his position in the hatch. “He's heading this way.”