Undead (9780545473460) (7 page)

My father is cleaning my face with a soft washcloth tucked into a pointed corner, and cold, cold water. Around my nose and eyes, it tickles, and it wakes me. I blink the water away.

It's bright, shockingly so.

But there's no Dad, just half a cold face.

It was a dream. For a moment, I think it's all been a dream, until I raise a hand to my cheek and see the white fluttering down upon me — snow. It's as if each flake is bringing memories of the day before. It happened.

I am lying across the double seat at the front of the bus, next to the door.

And the door is open.

Panic claws at me and I sit up. Where is everyone? A black-booted foot sticking out into the aisle tells me that Smitty is lying on a seat near the back. The makeshift window barricade is in place. Someone is snoring lightly behind me.

But the door is open.

I bolt out of my seat and hit the lever to shut the doors. They oblige, grudgingly. The snowboard that was holding them in place has been carefully moved inside, onto the steps. I quickly reinstate it. Someone has decided to go for a morning walk.

“Hey.”

I spin around. Smitty is standing behind me, his face scrunched by sleep.

“What's going on?” He scratches his head.

“Who's missing?”

He frowns at me. “Malice and Pete are in Slumberland. That loser, Gareth? Who cares?”

“Gareth was supposed to be on watch.” I return the frown. “He's gone, and he left the door open behind him.”

Alice appears from behind a seat, her eyes half-closed.

“What happened?”

“Pete!” I shout.

“Eh?” He sits up suddenly, ruffled and confused.

“Where's the laptop, Pete?” I demand. “Please tell me you slept on it.”

He smiles lazily. “I have it safe.”

“Really? Because the responsible adult of the group has left us home alone,” I say. “And I'm thinking he might not have gone empty-handed.”

The smile disappears.

“It's in my bag.” He duck-dives under his seat and retrieves a ratty black and orange backpack. It's unzipped and empty-looking. He checks inside anyway.

The laptop is gone.

Smitty lets out a battle cry and runs to the doors, flinging the snowboard aside. “Where has he gone? I'll kill him!” He launches himself into the snow and runs out into the parking lot, darting around the bus, as if Gareth might be hiding behind a corner, chuckling.

“Smitty!” I linger on the steps, unwilling to follow him into the snow. “Come in!”

I was sleeping right by the door. How did Gareth manage to make his escape without waking me?

Smitty climbs back onto the bus, fixes the snowboard back in place, and sinks down on the floor, defeated.

“He's gone? He's left us?” Alice is fully awake and getting up to speed.

“What does it matter?” Smitty spits. “He was useless. What matters is that he took with him our best chance to get help.”

“Not necessarily.” Pete stands up, and I'm treated to a whiff of pure morning breath. “He's probably taken the laptop to the café. That was the original plan. So we follow him.”

I move back a little. “And if the café has Wi-Fi, it probably has a PC. It doesn't matter if we have the laptop or not.”

Pete nods. “Or there's a chance we'll pick up the signal on Smitty's smart phone. There might even be a landline that works.” He slides into the driver's seat. “Let's hope this thing will start on fumes.”

“Wait!” I stop his hand from reaching for the ignition. “Can we make it down the hill? The snow's even deeper than yesterday.”

Pete hesitates.

“So if we don't drive, we walk?” Alice says. “Count me out.”

“But what if we can't get back up here?” I say. “What if there are more of those . . . people, the bus gets stuck, and we can't escape?”

“Yeah, you're right, it's going to be so much better if we're on foot,” Alice snarls. “Anyway, someone has to stay here to take care of him.” She points to the driver.

I feel a surge of guilt. We've pretty much ignored the driver since we finished mending the window. I approach him. He hasn't moved at all. I reach out to touch his hand and his skin feels waxy and cold.

Alice stares. “Is he . . . ?”

I move my palm over his face. There's a little warm air coming out of his nostrils. “No. He's still alive.” But maybe not for much longer. Something about him has begun to smell, too, but I'm afraid to look at his other wrist and unwrap the makeshift bandage.

“Whatever we're doing, we should do it now,” Smitty says. “I'll check out the road and clear a path.” He grabs the binoculars and tosses them to me. “You see if we're likely to have company.”

* * *

I stand on the roof with Pete and Alice. They followed me, and I didn't protest. More eyes. Mother Nature is playing ball; the snow has stopped falling and the sun is trying its best to break out from behind a lavender-gray cloud. The air is still, and there's now just a thin curl of black smoke from the gas station. A last desperate smoke signal. I try not to wonder too hard why nobody has come.

Smitty is riding his board down the road, pausing in places to scrape the ground.

Alice is trying the phones again. She's managed to acquire them all — even Smitty's prized smart phone — and she's holding them in her hands like a deck of cards, shuffling each one to the top, lifting it up, and checking for a signal. Judging by her pursed mouth, she is holding a bum hand.

There's a movement — I catch it out of the corner of my eye and spin around. A shuffle in the bushes. Steeling myself, I hold the binoculars up. A blackbird scuttles in the undergrowth, and flies out of the cover with a cascading shriek of alarm. Only a blackbird. What startled it? I grip the binoculars tighter. No movement in the bushes now; it was probably frightened by some snow falling from the tree, or another bird. I shiver. It has been years since I've heard a blackbird, and suddenly I'm sitting in a sandpit, at home — England Home — many years past. Dad is weeding nearby, whistling like the bird. It seems like a long, long time ago. He'd done no gardening in the States, and the blackbirds are different there. I feel a pang of missing him — raw and sudden. It's not like he's even going to be there when I get home.
If
I get home. I can't help but feel like this whole thing would never have happened if he was still with us. Certainly it never would have happened if my stupid mother's stupid job hadn't made us move back to this stupid country. Still, even if I want to blame my mother for Dad not being here, it might be a little extreme to blame all of this monstery stuff on her, too.

A
thump
vibrates the bus from within.

My heart jumps.

Alice gasps. “What was that?”

Pete rolls his eyes. “Must you scream at everything? Keep your knickers on. Something's just fallen off a seat.”

“Are you mental?” Alice shouts. “I didn't scream!” She turns to me. “Did I scream?”

I shake my head automatically.

From below us, the noise comes again.

Pete drops to his knees. “The bus driver, then.”

“He came around before, didn't he?” says Alice. “He does that, that's his thing. Wakes up, passes out, wakes up, passes out.”

I crawl to the hatch.

“Slowly,” Pete cautions.

I lift the hatch just a crack. We peep inside. From where I'm lying I can only see the front of the bus, and there's no one there. Or they're hiding behind a seat. I bob up and look toward the road. Smitty has climbed back up now. He's at the entrance to the parking lot. Soon he'll be at the bus door.

“I'm going to lift the hatch all the way open,” I whisper to Pete and Alice. “We need to look in the back.”

Alice clutches the neck of her jacket. Pete nods.

I carefully swing the lid of the hatch all the way over until it rests on the roof of the bus. We all shift around, three polar bears fishing in an ice hole, and peep in the other direction.

There is less light in the back of the bus — the improvised barricade on the back window blocks out the sun — and it takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but I can see something near the backseat. A figure, facing away from us, bent over as if fastening shoelaces. Slowly, it straightens up, vertebra by vertebra. I recognize the regulation blue coat, the pale blue shirt collar, and thinning gray hair.

“It
is
the driver!” Alice shouts, her voice light with relief. “Thank god.”

The driver's head turns around to face the direction of the noise. Turns around completely. Without the rest of his body following.

Then
Alice really does scream.

The driver's visage rushes into view as if through a zoom lens. A face of purple and brown, like a bashed-up fruit. His jaw hangs slack, his head lolls, and there is some kind of green discharge oozing from his mouth. His eyes are milky, unfocused for a second, then his neck snaps up straight and his body turns to face the same direction. An arm is flung out toward us, and my mother's best cashmere scarf trails through the air in a bloody arc.

Alice screams again. I grab the hatch lid, shut it tight, and sit on it.

“Oi!”

There's a shout from the front of the bus. Smitty.

“What's going on? Let me in, will ya?”

I leap up. “Sit on that!” I command Pete and Alice, and skitter over to the end of the bus. Smitty is standing by the doors, hands on hips. “It's the driver!” I call down to him. “He's woken up and he's one of them!”

Smitty stares up at me as if I am speaking another language. A crash makes him look farther down the bus, and the expression on his face turns to sickening comprehension. No further explanation needed.

“We're stuck up here.”

“How fast is he moving?”

“I don't know!” I shrug uselessly.

“Let's see.”

Smitty runs along the side of the coach, slaps the window.

“Oi! Mister! Hell-o!”

“What are you doing?”

Smitty tracks back and slaps the next window down.

“That's right, this way!” he shouts. He moves to the next window and thumps again. “I'm here!”

“Stop it!” Alice slithers to the edge of the bus roof on her belly like a candy-colored salamander. “Don't make him angry!”

“I can outrun him, easy!” Smitty shouts. “I'll get him out and double back.”

“Yes!” Alice cries. “Quickly!”

Smitty reaches the final window, then hits the button on the door. I realize what won't happen a second before it doesn't. Our snowboard locking system is doing its job too darn well. Smitty pushes the doors, trying to rattle the board free.

“It's no good!” he calls up. “Someone is going to have to open it from the inside.”

“Are you out of your tiny mind?” Alice shouts. “You do it!”

“Like how?” Smitty says. “I can't get up there.” He jumps and tries to catch one of the sideview mirrors to hoist himself up, but it's too high, even for his monkey skills.

“Then we should jump off!” Alice says. “Leave him locked up in there. Catch me!” She begins to swivel her legs around to dangle them over the edge. I grab her.

“No! Everything is inside the bus.” I hold tight to Alice's squirming body. “We can't just leave and take our chances out there. There might be more of them in the café, and who knows how far we'll have to go before we're safe? You were the one who said we should stay inside.”

“But
he's
inside!”

“Not for long.” I let go and stand up, oh-so-decisively. “He's slow, like the others?” I shout down to Smitty.

He nods. “I'll keep him at the front until you're inside . . . then get him to come toward you while you dodge past.”

“Easy.” I swallow.

“Too right.” He winks.

Pete is lying across the hatch like a starfish. He looks paler than ever.

“You're going in?” he says.

“Keep the hatch open.” My heart is hammering. “Promise me.”

He grunts and moves aside.
Reassuring.

I lift the hatch. “I'm ready!” I shout down to Smitty.

“He's still at the front,” he calls back. “You're good to go.”

I take a final breath of the cold, crisp air and lower myself into the bus.

I wriggle down behind a seat. The Undriver is at the front, swaying and slapping the windshield. Something is pissing him off. It's Smitty, jumping up and down on the other side of the glass like his own private whack-a-mole. I ease into the aisle and back down to row 20, where we stored the ski equipment. Carefully, I pull out a ski pole. It's not an ideal weapon, but it will have to do. I left my submachine gun back in the States. Ha-ha.

Smitty stops jumping and I can't see him anymore. Seems like the driver can't, either; he presses himself up to the glass, then stumbles back a step or two, contemplating his next move. I guess this is my cue.

“Hey!”

I bang my pole on the ground.

“Come get me!”

The head whips around again. That's a neat trick. Must be his signature monster move. It sure is effective. I resist the urge to pee my pants.

“That's right, mister! I'm back here!”

Oh, my Undead-taunting banter seriously needs work. I always wondered why the heroines in horror movies spend half their time making wisecracks when they fight their opponents. Now I know it's to distract themselves from thoughts of their imminent death. I edge toward the hatch, painfully aware that it's my only escape route. The driver begins to head my way. He's uncoordinated and shambling, but will he suddenly remember how to run? I hold the pole out in front of me and force myself to keep walking. Really it's just a test of how long I can keep my nerve as he staggers toward me. Maybe I should tell Pete to shut the hatch so that's not an option? I look up for a second. Alice and Pete stare down at me, faces pale, jaws almost as slack as the driver's. I cannot mess this up. I will look like a total loser. A dead loser. Or an Undead one.

Forget the hatch. I make myself walk past it. Now it's the doors or bust. I bang the pole again, take a step forward, one hand on a seat, ready to dart out of arm's reach.

The driver lurches closer, and believe me, there is no doubt in my mind that he is dead. There's nothing behind his eyes — no compassion, no anger, no fear. Any semblance of who he once was has gone, replaced by this stumbling, hungry-looking thing, reaching for me. And the
moaning
. It's a guttural groaning anchored so deep it sounds like he is trying to bring up oil. Does he have a wife? Kids? Anyone who would recognize him now? How would they feel if they could see him like this?

Get a grip. Concentrate.
My dad always told me I have fast reactions — that's what makes me a good skier — and now I've got to test them to the max. The driver's nearly upon me. Just a couple of feet separate us.

Now!

I dodge into the seat on my left, throwing a leg over the seats in front, set to scramble past. But the driver isn't close enough to dodge; he simply sidesteps into the corresponding seat a row farther down, like a well-trained chess piece.
Oh, goody
. I dart back into the aisle, then across to the right-hand side, clambering forward over a row before he can react. For a second I think I've made it. Then he lunges at me.

Without thinking I thrust the ski pole into his chest. It sinks in surprisingly easily with a
clunk
, momentarily pinning him like an indignant beetle. He swipes it away, and his sudden strength is shocking. I let go of the pole and it falls out of reach. He lunges again, spit flying out of his mouth in cloudy, viscous globules. I flatten myself against the window, my back slipping on the pathetic little nylon curtain that serves no purpose whatsoever except to hinder attempted escapes from flesh-eating monsters. As I slide down the window like broken egg, I notice that the ski pole has wedged between my row of seats and the one in front, making a feeble barrier between the bus driver and me. He presses against it, frustrated as he reaches for me, his fingers a few inches from my face. If I die right here, right now, I will be
ashamed
. What a fail. Struck down and eaten by a
bus driver
, for crap's sake, in Scotland, on a lame school trip. Just as the pole starts to buckle and his fingers clasp my hair, I throw myself over into the seat in front — and roll into the aisle.

I embrace the floor for a millisecond, willing it to open up and engulf me. “Move!” Alice screams from above.

I look up. The driver is bearing down on me, teeth gnashing. Alice screams again. Distracted, he straightens and swipes up at the hatch with his good arm.

It is time to stand up. But as I make to move, something attaches itself to my jacket. My hands scrabble underneath me. My ski pass has caught on something in the floor. I can't move.

A slam from above means the hatch is closed. I am on my own. Hey, they held out longer than I'd figured.

Desperately, I tug at the plastic pass. A silver ring pops up from the rubber floor. I stare at it. I know what that is. I pull on the silver ring with all my might and a trapdoor lifts up, slamming into the driver's face as he dives down to reach me. A black hole opens up underneath and I slither into it headfirst.

A thankfully brief fall, and cushioned by something squashy. I'm in the luggage hold, on top of an open suitcase — its lid removed to make the back window barricade.

It's dark but there's a rectangle of light above me. The trapdoor was not hinged; it came off completely before it whacked the driver in the face, and it is only a matter of time before his befuddled brain realizes I am still within reach.

Scrambling over the suitcases, spilling their contents on to the floor, I make for the doors of the hold. Doors in a hold are not designed for escape from the inside. I bang on the side of the bus with my fist, praying that Smitty will realize and open them up.

Above me looms the driver, staring blankly into the hole. The noise attracted him. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

“Hey!” I move farther down the bus, through souvenirs and dirty laundry, slapping the doors. “I'm in here! Get me out!”

A crash behind me tells me I'm no longer alone in the hold. Panic, rising up like cold water through my body, threatens to overwhelm me. Wedging my backside against a suitcase, I kick the door with both legs, then again, and again, and again. In the gloom, the driver begins to swim through the sea of suitcases in my direction.

I kick again.

Just as I'm convinced I'm never going to see daylight again, the door opens and light floods into the hold. I roll blindly toward the light and fall with a
crunch
into the snow.

Smitty stands there, looking down at me. But not for long. A moan erupts from within the hold. He goes to slam the door.

“Wait!” I scramble to my feet. “We need to get him out.” I pull Smitty a few feet away from the hold, and the driver emerges. “Keep on your feet. He's not too fast, but he's stronger than you think.”

“Oi, you soft git!” calls Smitty to the driver, who is finding his feet in the snow. “Pick on someone your own size.”

The driver stumbles toward us.

“You distract him while I climb back in,” I babble. Smitty looks confused. “The door is still barricaded. Shut the luggage hold after me and get ready to jump in through the front door.”

Unbelievably, Smitty does as he is told. He leaps through the snow, arms circling above him like it's all an elaborate dance routine.

“Come to me! Come to me!” he sings, then bends over, gathers snow into a ball, and throws it into the driver's blackened face. The driver's moans are momentarily muffled, but he plows toward Smitty regardless. “Oops!” Smitty cries in mock concern. “Excuse me, mister, I don't know what came over me.”

What a maniac. I struggle to keep pace with him as the driver staggers closer. Two lunatics and one monster, galloping through the snow, I don't think my mother quite envisaged this scenario when she signed the check for the school trip.

As the driver gets within a few feet of us, I dodge around him and run flat out to the bus. Throwing myself back into that dark confined space goes against every instinct, but I have to get on board and open the door. I can only hope that Smitty doesn't get too carried away with driver-taunting to remember to shut the hold after me.

Back in the aisle, I fix the trapdoor shut over the hole in the floor: better safe than sorry. Then I run to the front door, swiftly remove the snowboard, and press the lever to open.

In the parking lot, Smitty's driver-baiting is getting more and more dangerous. He lunges at the driver, then quickly spins away before the driver can grab him.

“Smitty! Close the hold!” I shout, a fist of fear and frustration rising in my chest. He ignores me, obviously finding himself too funny for words.

If you want something done right . . . I rush back out into the snow and slam the doors to the hold shut. Attracted by the noise, the driver does his head-spinning trick — starting to get old now — and begins stumbling toward the bus.

“Smitty!” I shout. “Snap out of it!”

I bound back to the door to find Alice at the top of the steps, hand on the lever.

“I was waiting for you to come back,” she says guiltily. “I wouldn't have shut them yet.” She peers out at Smitty, who is still running rings around the driver. “That'll end in tears.”

I turn, hands on hips, ready to shout at Smitty again, when something causes all the breath to leave my body. Smitty slips on the snow and skids, right into the legs of the driver, who topples over on top of him.

“Smitty!” I scream, momentarily fixed to the spot, unable to move or to tear my eyes away from the pile of writhing limbs making deadly snow angels on the ground. Before I know what I'm doing, I've grabbed the snowboard on the steps and I'm rushing toward the pileup.

Smitty's head and body are completely obscured by the driver, but his legs stick out beyond the driver's legs, kicking frantically as the driver tries to bite him. I raise the snowboard and smack it on the back of the driver's head. It doesn't even make him pause. Snowboards are not built to knock someone out. Right now, that is a major design flaw. I ram the end of the board into the driver's side, trying to shove him off Smitty, who gets a hand free. I ram again, and Smitty pushes, and suddenly we've rolled him to one side for a second. Just long enough for me to remember the dangerous part of the snowboard and how it can be used. I lift the board up high above my head and with a superhuman surge of fear and desperation, bring the metal edge down on the driver's exposed neck.

There it sticks, stuck in his throat, like an awkward question.

The driver stops moving, a look of dull surprise frozen on his face. Smitty scrambles to his feet, and the driver drops onto his back, the board still sticking halfway through his neck.

I crouch down, hands over my mouth.

“Awesome job, Roberta.” Smitty stands up and brushes himself down. “Although I totally had him.”

“My name's not Roberta,” I whisper through my fingers, the cold of the snow seeping up from the seat of my leggings and into my core.

“Whatever you say.” Smitty hunkers down next to me and smiles, his eyes twinkling in a way that might have made my cheeks warm if I hadn't been staring past him, at the thing, the thing that I killed. “Not bad going for a ski bunny.”

I almost feel the movement before I see it. The driver's mouth opens, an arm shoots out, and fingers catch the edge of my jacket. I fling myself backward, a scream falling out of my mouth as I tumble into the snow, then quickly scramble up on my elbows, ready to kick, to claw, to fight . . .

In a single movement Smitty stands, raises his leg, and drops his big black boot down hard on the snowboard. There is a crack and a gurgle, and the driver's head is liberated from his body.

“Oh my god, what did you do?” Alice is behind us.

“That was incredible!” Pete enthuses. “Best use for a snowboard I've seen all week!”

“Nobody is going to believe this when I post it!” Alice is holding a phone up. She's been filming the whole thing.

I feel the sting of bile in the back of my throat as I tear my eyes away from the head. I half expect Smitty to pick it up by its hair, or kick it into the air and shout “Goal!” but surprisingly he stands somberly, almost in respect, gazing down at the driver and his head. Then the moment is gone.

He gently pulls me up, puts a strong arm around my shoulders, and together we walk toward the bus.

“We're going to need a new board for the door.”