Undead (9780545473460) (5 page)

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.

I slip out of the seat, and Pete jumps in and turns the keys on the dashboard.

“Brakes are a no-no in these conditions,” he shouts, as if this is just another day in driver's ed. He pushes a lever and presses down on the accelerator, carefully. The bus's slide downhill slows. “Trick is to get into a low gear initially” — he forces the gear stick and the bus stops — “then shift up into a high one as quickly as possible. The less traction the better.” The bus starts to move forward uphill. “Nobody move!” he shrieks. “Cross your fingers we make it up, and don't move an inch!”

Subdued as much by Pete's all-out personality flip-flop as our impending doom, we all hold our breath. The bus creeps up toward the brow of the hill, slowly, slowly, every now and then giving a little judder and making the panic rise in my throat again. Eventually,
un-frickin'-believably
, we make it.

To the right, overlooking the café below the hill, there's a small parking lot marked
OVERFLOW
. It's carpeted with pristine snow. Pete expertly steers the bus into it, turns the key in the ignition, and the engine shudders and dies. He sits back in the chair and lets out a deep breath. Hunkered down on the top step and clinging to the barrier rail, I do the same.

“Keep going, White Bread!” Smitty says. “Why are we stopping?”

Pete reaches into his pocket and brings out his inhaler. He takes a long hit. “Go where, exactly?” he says, spookily calm. “The road continues up the hill.” He points with the inhaler. “And there is no way this thing is making it up there.” He takes another long drag.

“Um, well, I was thinking . . .” Smitty is feigning dumb. “How about the
exit
?” He grabs Pete and shoves him up against the window.

“Hey!” I protest, but Smitty's not listening.

“See that road down there?” He points to the turn we didn't take, the turn leading away from the gas station, back past the Cheery Chomper and out onto the main road, which is hidden by a line of trees. “Remember the way we came in? Now would be a really good time to go back out again.”

Pete shrugs him off and sits down again. “Wasn't my call, remember? I wasn't driving at the time.”

“So let's go now!” Alice steps into the aisle. “You can drive! Drive us out of here!”

“Great idea,” Pete says. He taps the dashboard. “Except we're running on empty.”

Alice's face drops. “We're out of fuel?”

Smitty swears. Gareth adds his own choice of word.

Pete sighs. “And it's safe to say Smitty may have taken away our chance to fill 'er up.” He gestures to the gas station inferno, his hand as graceful as a ballerina's.

Gareth turns to Smitty with crazy eyes.

“Stupid kid —”

“Yeah?”

Gareth and Smitty puff their chests and muscle up to each other like a pair of over-excitable roosters.

“So we stay!” I shout. “For now.” I get between them. Always the peacemaker. “Make the bus safe, wait for someone to come!”

They glare at each other for a few seconds, neither wanting to back down, then Smitty punches the back of a seat and flings himself onto the top of the dashboard, where he crouches, gargoyle-like and shaking his head. Gareth flounces to the back of the bus.

Pete winces. “I think I hurt my head.” He flutters a hand around his halo-wafer.

“Uh, yes.” It's probably best not to let him know he has shelving stuck in his skull.

“Here.” Smitty leans over from his perch on the dashboard, grabs the halo-wafer, and yanks it out of Pete's head. “That better?”

Pete stares at the bloodied triangle of aluminum in Smitty's hand. “That was in me?”

“Only for a minute.” I'm quick to retrieve a clean handkerchief that my mother thoughtfully placed in my jacket pocket for just such an occasion. (One of her token gestures to make up for never actually being there, I guess.) I hover over Pete's head. There's a perfect triangular mark in his skull, with a flap of skin sticking up like a tufted carpet. It's bleeding, but not too badly, and I can't see any brains leaking out. “Hey, it obviously didn't impair your driving.” I give him the handkerchief and press his hand to his head. “But maybe sit down for a while?”