UNCORRECTED PROOF | NOT FOR SALE
DIE YOUNG, STAY HUNGRY.
Title: Undead
Author: Kirsty McKay
Publication Date: September 2012
Format: Jacketed Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-545-38188-8
Retail Price: $17.99 US
E-book ISBN: 978-0-545-47346-0
E-book Price: $17.99 US
Ages: 14 – 18
Grades: 9 – 12
LOC Number: 2011044931
Estimated Length: 272
Trim: 5-1/2 x 8-1/4
Classification: Fiction: Horror & Ghost Stories; Humorous
Stories; Action & Adventure
Scholastic Inc.
557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012
For information, contact us at:
[email protected]
UNCORRECTED PROOF – NOT FOR SALE
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against the bound book.
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A Letter from the Publisher
Dear readers,
At the last Frankfurt Book Fair, Kirsty McKay’s Undead had me going out of my mind, dying as I was to scoop up this debut. I confess now, I would have killed to get it on my list. Fortunately, it didn’t come to such a gruesome end — or, if it did, I’ll never tell where the bodies are buried.
Burnt to a crisp, decapitated by snowboard, drowned in a frozen lake:
There are bodies all over the place in the following pages. A quartet of high school misfits gets stuck on the school trip from hell — stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a blizzard, on a bus. To survive, they’ve got to work together to annihilate the rest of their brainless classmates, who have indeed turned into zombies (in case the title didn’t give that away). It’s Speed meets The Shining meets Shaun of the Dead meets The Breakfast Club, and, if you’ll permit me a Briticism, it’s a bloody scary, bloody funny romp! Of course, friendship, and a touch of romance, help save the day.
The night is another story.
Kirsty, although English, currently makes her home just outside of Boston —
which I understand to be one of the spookiest corners of the States. I know she’ll be at your beck and call to help scare up excitement in Fall 2012. And by then, we’ll be well underway on the sequel, Unfed!
I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. . . .
Barry Cunningham
Publisher
Chicken House
CHICKEN HOUSE
SCHOLASTIC INC. NEW YORK
Text copyright © 2012 by Kirsty McKay
All rights reserved. Published by Chicken House, an imprint of
Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. chicken house, scholastic, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
www.scholastic.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2011 by Chicken House,
2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS.
www.doublecluck.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior
written permission of the publisher. For information regarding
permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions
Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKay, Kirsty.
Undead / Kirsty McKay. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
Summary: On a school trip to snowbound Scotland, several students
become infected and turn into hungry zombies, leaving a small band
of survivors to take refuge in the school bus.
ISBN 978-0-545-38188-8
[1. Zombies — Fiction. 2. Survival — Fiction. 3. Horror stories — Fiction.
4. Scotland — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M47865748Un 2012
[Fic]—dc23
20110449431
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 13 14 15 16
Printed in the U.S.A.
First edition, September 2012
The text type was set in Alisal
Book design by Phil Falco
For John
Gobble, gobble, gobble
I would rather die than face them all again. Die horribly. In a messy,
fleshy, blood ’n’ guts kind of way. It is a total no-brainer.
I’m leaning my forehead against the cold glass of the bus window
as we draw into the parking lot of the roadside café, earbuds in place.
The music died long ago, but this way I maintain the illusion of invisi—
bility. I’m perfecting my thousand-yard stare out into the desolate
Scottish countryside, and the weather is doing the whole pathetic fallacy
thing. (As in, it’s crappy, and it echoes my mood. Just in case you nodded off during that particular English Lit class. Hey, I make no judgment.) Another couple of minutes and I’ll be alone. My dear classmates
will all be going to lunch, and nothing and nobody can force me to go
with them.
This would be the School Trip from Hell, if it wasn’t so stupidly
freezing. Cold and damp — the kind that seeps lead into your bones and
slows your will to live. Compared to the wilds of Scotland, even hell has
its perks.
“A skiing trip before the start of school, Bobby?” my dad had enthused
all those months ago, when we were still back in the States and the
England move seemed like a foggy half idea that was happening to
someone else. “Perfect! What better chance for you to get to know your
new classmates?”
“You can impress them all on the slopes!” my mum had chimed in,
ever-so-helpfully.
Yep. So that was settled, then.
What my parents had failed to figure was that Aviemore, Scotland,
was hardly Aspen, Colorado. And that trying to make new friends by
showing off my hot shit skiing skills would be the very best way to get
my butt kicked, UK-stylee.
Bum, not butt.
Butt marks me out as different, like sidewalk, cell phone, and soccer.
When we moved to the US six years ago, they thought I sounded as
British as the Queen. Now that I’m back in the motherland again, I’m
like some weird hybrid, a freako chimera with an ever-changing accent.
I need to relearn my own language. And fast. I’ve had enough of the
snickering, the rolling of eyes, and the throwing of hard snowballs when
my back is turned. American high school can be brutal (song and dance
routines in the cafeteria? Meh . . . not so much), but the British version is just as cruel. Every meal at the ski resort this past weekend had been torturous. Looking for a space at a table. Hoping for Just One Friendly
Face. Praying that Mr. Taylor and Ms. Fawcett didn’t beckon me over
to eat with them again, knowing that it would be social suicide to be marked as teachers’ pet.
But the horror is nearly over. That thought has kept me going for the
last twenty-four hours. Just the journey back to school to endure.
Everyone troops off into the Cheery Chomper café for lunch, but I’m
staying right here on the bus. I’ve prepared for this, for sure; squirrel—
ing away a quickly made peanut butter sandwich at breakfast. As I hid
it in my bag with an apple, that reality-st
ar skank wannabe Alice Hicks
caught my eye, and one of her cronies started singing “It’s Peanut Butter
Jelly Time.” Whatever. Stupid girls with their pastel-colored skiwear and
pink glitter nail polish. This lunchtime they’ll have to find someone else to throw their fries at.
Gah! Chips, not fries.
My appetite is zero, but that’s hardly the prob. Truth is, I have been
dying to pee ever since we left the ski resort . . . but come on, only a fool would use the bathroom onboard. Pete Moore dropped a deuce on the trip up, and they gave him hell about it for two hours straight. How
could he have been such a goob? You’d think he’d have enough to worry
about already with that whole Class Geek Extraordinaire thing he has
going on. Some jerk-offs even call him “Albino Boy” on account of his
white hair and see-through skin, which could legitimately be considered
borderline racist. He smiled at me once, early on, but it was the kind of
smile that someone gives when they recognize an easier target. He’ll
soon learn I’m not going to put myself in harm’s way to save his plastic—
wrap skin. And if that means crossing my legs for the next few hours,
then so be it.
I wipe the condensation off the window. Wow. The snow is coming down thick and fast now. Typical. No fresh powder for five days at
Aviemore, and now that we’re heading back to civilization we have major
dumpage. I watch my classmates snake their way through a channel in
the snow across the parking lot and up the steps to the café. As they
reach the door, squeals ring out.
A huge, furry carrot is standing at the entrance, waving at them.
For a moment I think I’m hallucinating with carbon monoxide poisoning from the bus’s engine, but no, it’s a huge, furry carrot all right. The squeals quickly turn to laughter and derision. The carrot is some poor, unfortunate soul, dressed in an enormous orange suit and green tights
and gloves. He’s waving and handing out samples from a small cart,
little cups of something. My fellow students grab the freebies greedily.
I squint at a banner pinned to the wall above the door:
CARROT MAN VEGGIE JUICE!
PUT SOME FIRE IN YOUR BELLY!
Carrot Man stomps his carrot feet in the snow. He must be freezing his onions off. Suddenly I feel kind of lucky to be me, alone and
warm on the bus. Ms. Fawcett shoos everyone inside, and Carrot Man
is left to clumsily pick up all the discarded cups of Veggie Juice and tidy his cart.
“Smitty, you’ll be staying here with me.”
Say what? I peek between the seats. Mr. Taylor is barring the exit from
an ink-haired indie kid in a leather jacket. Rob Smitty: rebel without a
pause, freak show, and dropout in the making. But the best snowboarder,
definitely. When I first clapped eyes on him, I was convinced he’d be the
head of the underage drinking club — and he is — but dude knows how to
throw himself down a mountain, too. He was the only other member of
my class crazy enough to tackle the double black diamond runs. Respect
due, in spite of the try-hard guyliner and bad attitude.
“Mr. Taylor, you can’t keep me on this bus,” Smitty drawls. “It’s against
my rights.”
“I can and I will.” The teacher pulls a wry grin, the effect of which
is lost when he sneezes violently into a large, checked handkerchief. “You lost all your rights with me when you deemed it necessary to buy vodka and cigarettes with a fake ID. Now sit down and shut up, and pray I don’t
give you this flu.”
Smitty throws his arms in the air and stomps back down the aisle.
“I warned you, Mr. Taylor. Don’t know what the school board will think
when they hear you wouldn’t give me any food. That’s deprivation,
that is.”
“Big word for you, Smitty,” Mr. Taylor jokes, but I can see doubt in his
glassy eyes. He puts on his ill-advised fluorescent ski jacket. “OK, I’ll get you a sandwich. But do not move from this bus.” He jabs a finger. “Under any circumstances. Or there’ll be hell to pay. Believe me, I am in no state to be trifled with.” He sneezes again as if to prove his point. As the driver releases the door for him, a flurry of snow flies inside.
“Don’t forget I’m allergic to nuts, sir!” shouts Smitty. “You wouldn’t
want my parents to sue if I drop down dead!”
The door swings shut. I huddle into my seat. The driver turns up the
radio and this insanely happy song assaults my ears, something about
the sun shining every day, how lucky we are to be in the sun. Lucky,
riiight . . . The driver opens a flask of coffee, steam funneling into the air as he pours a cup. Why does coffee always smell so much better than it tastes? Not that I could drink a thing. I cross my legs and think of arid
landscapes . . .
Useless. Gotta pee, gotta pee.
“Oi, mate.”
I flinch — mortifyingly — as Smitty hangs over the back of my seat. He
isn’t talking to me, though, but to the bus driver.
“Let us off for a bit, will you?”
The driver glares at him. “Sit down, lad. You heard what your
teacher said.”
Smitty strolls back up to the front of the bus. “Come on, geezer. Just
want to get some fresh air.”
“Ha!” The driver says. “Catch your death of cold, more like.”
It’s now or never. While they aren’t paying attention, I remove my
earbuds, shuffle out of the seat — keeping low — and make my move
down the bus, bathroomwards.
“Hey you, lassie!” Driver’s seen me. “Toilet’s closed when the bus is
stopped!”
“But . . .” My cheeks are hot. Smitty is looking.
“Company policy!” the driver shouts. “Use the facilities in the café.”
I linger in the aisle. There is no way I can hang on for another four
hours; I might damage something. I have to face the mob in the café.
“I need to go, too!” Suddenly Smitty is hopping on one leg, the other
crossed in front of him. The bus shakes as he jumps in time to the song
on the radio. What. A. Douche.
“Sit down!” the driver yells, then turns to me. “And you —”
Something slaps the windshield.
We all jump, and the driver swears robustly. A streak of coffee is now
adorning his white shirt.
There’s another smack on the glass.
A fat pink hand waggles away the snow from a patch on the window.
Then it’s gone.
“Damn kids!” the driver mutters, leaning forward to put his cup on
the dashboard. “Clear off!” he shouts, thumping the windshield. As he
does, something slams hard into the side of the bus. I grab at a seat to
stop myself from falling.
“All right, you asked for it!” Rubbing his head where he banged it
on the steering wheel, the driver stands up and pulls on his coat. “Stay
here!” he shouts at us as he pushes the lever that opens the door, then
clomps down the steps and off the bus. The door shuts behind him with
a hiss.
“I won’t tell, Newbie.” Smitty is smiling at me. I frown back, and he
points behind me. “If you wanna go potty.”
I give him my snarkiest eye-roll.
Suddenly the bus shunts violently forward, flinging us both to the
floor. I gulp for air, the wind knocked out of me, waiting to see if anything is hu
rt other than my pride.
After a moment, Smitty speaks. “You OK?”
“Yeah.” Rubber matting, sticky in places, against my cheek. Gross.
I push myself up to a sitting position. “What was that?”
“Dunno.” Smitty is already on his feet. “We were hit.” He leaps over
me and runs to the back of the bus. He rubs his hand against the back
window. “Can’t see anything.”
I get up, trying not to cling too noticeably to the seats as I walk,
and clamber onto the seats beside him. I peer through the back window.
Whiteout. The snow is now filling the air, dense and whirling in a kind
of violet light, obscuring everything.
“I’m going to look.” Smitty bounds back up the bus.
“No!” I don’t know why I don’t want him to, but I really don’t.
“Someone could be hurt.” He’s almost at the door, silhouetted by the
brightness outside. I pull myself back up the aisle.
“We should stay here until the driver comes back.”
“What if the bus explodes because something crashed into us?”
Smitty says.
I blink. “Yeah. That so doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Says who?” Smitty makes a Scream face at me. He pushes the lever
and the door clatters open with a rush of cold air. “What if driver dude
is stuck in the wreckage?” He affects what he presumably thinks is my
semi-American accent, and flutters his eyelashes. “I could, like, totally save the day.” He launches himself down the steps to the door, stops with a jolt. “Whoa.”
“What’s wrong?”
Slowly, he points into the whiteness. I squint past him.
There in the snow is a large puddle of red.
“What is that?” I cautiously descend the steps until I’m right behind
him. Flakes of snow fall through the doorway onto my face.
“Nothing good.”
A crimson trail leads from the puddle to the front of the bus. Together,
we lean out and peer around the doorway.
A screech, like a fox caught in a trap, comes from the direction of
the café.
My head whips around.
“What the . . . ?” Smitty backs up into me.
The screech comes again, closer this time. I stare into the snow, eyes
straining. A vague shape is moving in the whiteness.
Undead (ARC) Page 1
