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, um, 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
happened?”
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 so over.
“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. What I imagine a
bomb site must look like. 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 just 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 the
impact sent flying 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 such a nightmare!” Alice cries. “They want to kill us!” Her eyes
narrow. “And Shanika’s got my CoutureCandy 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 average 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.
“Yo, Joe DiMaggio!” Smitty shouts. “Get up here!”
Gareth appears behind Pete and jumps onboard. “Drive! Drive!
Drive!”
The driver puts his foot down as Gareth and Pete scramble down
the aisle. I dive back into my Smitty-designated 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 handclap 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.
“Think I saw this in Diehard. Classic.” 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!” Gare
th 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 toasts-r-us.
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 vanilla wafer planted in
a scoop of 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, unfricking-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 gas?”
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 back to the gas station inferno.
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 stomps 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. She’d be ever so pleased to know I’m using all her favorite fabrics to mop up blood.) 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?”
I crouch down beside the unconscious bus driver, feeling for a pulse.
My own hand is shaking so much I can barely locate a vein. Eventually I
find the beat, irregular and weak but present.
“He’s alive,” I say. “He probably saved all of us. We should make him
comfortable.”
Smitty hops off the dashboard and helps me drag him carefully down
the aisle. We lever him onto the backseat and put him on his side: the
recovery position, if I recall my all-American first-aid class. The driver’s face is slack and gray. It doesn’t look like he’ll be doing any recovering anytime soon.
“Are the doors secure?” Smitty bounds to the front of the bus.
“It’s OK,” Alice shouts from the window, holding the binoculars to
her eyes. “No one’s following. I think you got them all, Smitty. Burnt to
a crisp.”
“Yeah, that was a dangerous stunt to pull, you psycho,” Gareth sneers.
“You could have incinerated the lot of us.”
“But he didn’t,” I say. My leg is beginning to pound. I’d almost forgotten I’d hurt it in the store-quake.
“I didn’t,” Smitty repeats, pushing past me and squaring up to Gareth
again. “And if it wasn’t for us, you’d have been munched by her BFFs” — he jabs a finger at Alice — “a fate worse than death. Shortly to be followed by actual death. So try a little gratitude for size.”
“You little —” Gareth snarls.
“Hey!” Pete shouts from the driver’s seat. “We have a signal!”
That gets our atten
tion. Pete’s hunched over the square, black object
that he brought onto the bus with him — a laptop. “This was by the
register.”
“It’s the boss’s,” Gareth says. “Uses it for stock. It’s a pretty crap
machine. Can’t even go online.”
“I beg to differ.” Pete holds it in front of him and stands up gingerly,
eyes fixed on the screen. “It has wireless, but it was disabled. Presumably to stop the employees from downloading porn —”
“Shut it, kid!” Gareth snaps.
“Luckily for us, I enabled the disabled.” Pete smirks. “We’re
web-worthy.”
“Internet?” Smitty rushes up the aisle toward Pete. “First he’s Ricky
Bobby, then he’s the geek that saves us all. Aren’t you just racing from
zero to hero?” He makes a grab for the laptop.
“Back off!” Pete moves the laptop out of Smitty’s reach. “Low battery,
teeny- weeny signal. Not so much a signal, just the name of the provider, but it proves there must be Wi-Fi somewhere. I just need to find it.” He moves through the bus like a water diviner, tilting the laptop at various
angles, holding it above his head. After two lengths of the bus, he sits
back down in the driver’s seat.
“Well?” I say.
Pete hits some keys and shuts the lid.
“Nothing.”
Gareth stands up. “What do you mean, nothing? You just said there
was a signal.”
“Too weak.”
“Give it to me.” Gareth moves toward Pete.
“You can take it if you want.” Pete looks up at him with his pale green
eyes. “And spend the next ten minutes wearing out the battery. Or we
can wait till the dust settles down there” — he points through the trees at the café — “and go to the source. If you weren’t online at the garage, the Cheery Chomper is the only place the Wi-Fi could be coming from. But with so little juice, we only get one shot.”
“Let’s vote,” I say. “All those who want to wait.” I raise my hand.
Pete smiles wanly and raises his.
“Yeah.” Alice is reluctant, but with us.
“All hail democracy. You’re out-voted, mister,” Smitty says. “We
watch” — he snatches the binoculars from Alice — “we wait till the smoke
clears, then we’re down there.”
Undead (ARC) Page 5
