Gareth laughs. “You stupid kids know nothing. That fire will be burning bright all night. It’s petroleum, not some garden bonfire.”
I look at the flames glowing orange at the bottom of the hill.
“Then that’s as good a signal as any. Someone will come.”
6
It takes us until the last of the dying light to shore up the glassless back window.
Pete produces duct tape he carries in his backpack. (I know. It’s probably a geek thing, like ironed jeans and [TK].) Smitty braves the outside to open the main luggage hold. He cuts the tops off the suitcases with
an evil-looking penknife and Frisbees them out into the snow, where I
run around collecting them like some demented Mario character. Then
there is the tricky part of attaching them to the back window. Not to
mention the fact that the driver is still unconscious on the backseat.
It’s easier to work around him than move him again, but the down—
side is he gets the occasional thing dropped on him. He doesn’t seem to
notice. We find some cord in an overhead locker and there are curtain
hooks on either side of the window, but really the suitcase tops are held
up by tape. It’s more of a windbreak than a barricade, but it’s the best
we can do.
We form a human chain to retrieve anything from the hold that
might be suitable for the night, for survival, for whatever may come next.
I say “we” — Alice is on lookout with the binoculars, since she refuses to get off the bus, while Gareth has found a first-aid kit and is sitting in the driver’s seat, fiddling with various imagined wounds. Regardless,
rows 20 and 21 are soon crammed with skis, poles, and clothing,
and Smitty has replaced his precious snowboard — the one that was
locking the door
—
with an alternative belonging to one of our
unfortunate ex-classmates.
As darkness falls, the gas station alarm is still screeching, the fire is
still burning, and a new argument is a-brewing. About lighting. Alice
wants it on, Pete and Smitty think not. I agree that it could make us an
easy target, but I have to grudgingly concede with Alice that it will also make us easier to rescue. Because the rescuing part is absolutely going to happen. But if it doesn’t . . . what if we have to drive the bus down
the hill again and the battery is dead because we kept the lights on?
And we might need to turn the heat on. The work and adrenaline has
made us hot, but now that night has come, it’s going to get cold — maybe
unbearably cold. We’re going be creating our own version of one of those
TV shock docs that are called cuddly things like I Shouldn’t Have Survived the Night or I Ate My Best Friend to Live.
Speaking of which . . .
“Do we have any food?” Gareth finally stops playing with himself long
enough to stalk the aisle.
“No,” Smitty says. “Pity you didn’t think to grab something from the
shop while you were swinging that bat around, Gareth.”
“I have a sandwich I can share,” I interject before they can beat each
other up. “And if you look in the locker where Ms. Fawcett was sitting,
there are some chips — er, crisps — and sodas. I think she was planning
on handing them out later anyway.”
“Oh, well, if she was planning on doing that, it must be OK to take
them.” Smitty shoots me a look.
I feel myself redden. What a dumb thing to say. Like any of that
matters anymore.
Alice clambers up onto the teacher formerly known as Ms. Fawcett’s
former seat and tosses bags of chips crisps and cans of sodas around the bus. But not at me. “Guess you’ll be OK with your PB and J,” she smirks.
Wot-ever. I’ll save the sandwich for later, preferably when Alice is at the leg-gnawing stage, then I’ll eat it in front of her, slowly and deliberately and with sound effects.
They eat all of the chips. Alice finds a packet of Scotch eggs in
someone’s bag — hard-boiled eggs cased in sausage meat and then
deep-fried: now that’s a snack you don’t find in the average American lunch box. And then there’s nothing more to do except put on as many clothes as we can fit into, and wait: for the troops, sleep, or asphyxiation from Pete’s toxic egg farts, whichever comes first.
In the process of changing from my ripped-up jeans into comfortable leggings (thanks and RIP, Caitlin McCreary), I finally tackle my
leg. Armed with the first-aid kit and some antibacterial wipes from Ms.
Fawcett’s bottomless backpack, I peel back the denim on my right leg
tentatively. Blood has already clotted over the material, which is stuck
to my skin. I grit my teeth but keep peeling, and the blood runs anew.
I feel chunks rising in my throat with the pain . . . and I take a look.
There’s a big scrape, and a gash that’s small but kind of deep. I can see
something startlingly white in there. It takes me a moment to realize it’s bone. Gah.
“That needs stitches,” Smitty says matter-of-factly as he appears over
my shoulder, making me jump. I stop myself from pulling the bloody
jeans back up again. It’s not like I have anything to be ashamed of.
Besides, my puffer coat practically reaches to my knees.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I say. “There are some butterfly bandages in this
box.” I rifle in the first-aid kit. “They’ll do the trick.”
“Shame.” Smitty sits on the dashboard and slurps on a soda. “I’m a
dab hand at needlework.”
Yeah, like there’s any dab way I’d let that happen. “So, you OK?”
I casually switch the focus to him as I take out some antibacterial
ointment and put a big glob of it on the hole in my leg.
“Is this the part where we compare injuries?” He laughs, and
the sound warms me up a little. “You win. I’ve got nothing except a
sugar high.”
“I think Pete beats us all with his busted head.” I glance down
the aisle in his direction.
“No kidding.” Smitty grins at me. “Oi, Petey! Come and see the
naughty nurse!”
Pete takes some persuading, but he eventually sits on the top step,
and Smitty and I look at his head. White-blond is the best hair color
if you’re aiming for maximum horror effect with a head wound. The
blood has pinkened thick sections of his hair, and there’s angry-looking
swelling around the place where the metal was sticking into his skull,
although the wound is already scabbing. I leave it alone, and clean the
surrounding scalp as best as I can with a wipe. He’s uncomplaining,
stoical even. A far cry from the hyperventilating mess I found in the
toilet stall. He’s probably still pumping adrenaline right now. Or maybe
it’s all the chemicals in his inhaler. Hope I’m not around when he crashes and burns.
“So, before . . . how did you end up in the bathroom?” I say conversationally as I fasten a pad of cotton around his head with a spotty
bandanna that I think used to belong to one of Alice’s cronies. It’s mint—
green and white, and it makes him look like a Lost Boy. The Peter Pan
ones, not the retro eighties vamps.
“I ran.” He breathes in deeply and his chest rattles. He delves into a
pocket and takes a hit off his inhaler.
“You were in the Cheery Chomper when it all . . . went down?”
There’s a brief smile, h
am on wry. “Yeah. In the gift shop, out of sight.
Browsing the magazines.”
I smile back encouragingly and he continues.
“Yes, I guess you could say I was in my own world.” His eyes glaze
over. “Intellikit has just brought out a new computer chip — it’s beyond
clever. I was reading an article in PCWorld —”
“Get out of town, that’s intense,” Smitty mocks. “Why didn’t you tell
us this before?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with it.” Pete raises an
eyebrow. “But suffice to say, absorbed as I was in the magazine, I wasn’t
entirely present.”
“Everybody else was eating in the café?” I ask.
“Just a few feet away.” He nods slowly. “Baying like dogs for their
burgers. I shut them out; I always do.”
“Yeah, me too.” I try to bond, but he gives me a strange look, and so
does Smitty. O-K, never mind. “So what happened?” I ask.
“Mr. Taylor came in.” Pete frowns. “Asked me if Smitty was allergic to
nuts. Why he thought I’d know, I couldn’t tell you.”
Smitty chuckles.
“Then what?” I urge.
“That’s when he collapsed.”
“What?” I say. “Mr. Taylor?”
“Yup. One minute he’s dithering by the cold drinks, next he’s keeled
over on the floor.”
“What did you do?”
Pete looks at me, surprised. “Nothing. I waited for someone to notice,
but the woman behind the register was gone and nobody else appeared.
It was only then that I realized the baying had ceased.” He cracks his
knuckles. “It was quiet. Apart from a hissing noise: the deep-fryers,
I think, or maybe water running in the kitchen.” His face gets a dreamy
look. “It was rather lovely, actually.”
“Oh, idyllic.” Smitty faux-swoons.
“Then what?” I lean forward.
“Then I walked out into the café.” He blinks. “And there they all were,
lying across the tables. Completely still. Like Mr. Taylor.” He swallows,
and I watch the white lump in his throat move up and down, barely
covered by his weird, translucent skin. “Like everyone had fallen asleep.”
“It must have been terrifying,” I say.
“No!” His eyes flash and the corners of his mouth turn up in a slow
smile. “It was wonderful! They were lying there, helpless. Imagine it . . .”
He leans close. “I could do anything! They couldn’t stop me!”
“You are a real head case, Petester,” Smitty sighs.
“Um, right,” I say to Pete. “So what did you do?”
“Nothing. It was only wonderful for a moment, then it was horrible.”
He shudders. “They started waking up. Mr. Taylor first — I was standing
there, watching the others, and he appeared behind me. He grabbed my
shoulder. I turned around, and there he was. His face was grotesque,
distorted — he was making the most unearthly sound. He caught me and
pulled me toward him. His mouth was open — he was trying to bite me!”
“Hardcore.” I shake my head. “What did you do?”
“I still had PCWorld in my hand. I rolled it up and shoved it in his mouth, then I ran.”
“Ha-ha!” Smitty laughs. “You’ve got some moves, Einstein.”
“You left the café?” I say.
Pete nods. “Ran to the gas station. It was locked, so I went around the
back and found the toilets.”
Something’s not right. I look down the aisle. Alice is lying across two
of the seats halfway up the bus, covered in about five ski jackets. “Did you see Alice before you left?” I whisper.
“No,” Pete replies.
“She says when she came out of the café bathrooms, only Mr. Taylor
was standing. And when we looked through the binoculars, we could
still see everyone lying on the tables.”
“Well?”
“You said, ‘they’ started waking up.” Smitty says, catching my drift.
“Who else woke up before you left?”
Pete shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I didn’t see, exactly. I just
heard a noise — a groaning — coming from a direction that wasn’t Mr.
Taylor.” He wrinkles his face. “Then there was a crash — like a door
slamming. I didn’t stick around to find out who or where or why.”
“Could it have been Alice you heard — coming out of the bathrooms?”
I ask.
“Possibly, if she banged the door. But I don’t think it was her groaning, unless her voice dropped a few octaves.”
It doesn’t make sense. Like any of this does. Still, Alice said that
everyone was passed out on the tables or on the floor. Maybe Pete was
mistaken. Or maybe there was someone Alice missed, who came to life,
then collapsed again? Or they’d left the building and we simply hadn’t
seen them yet?
“Thanks for patching me up, anyway.” Pete gives me a tight smile,
gets up, and walks back down the aisle.
Smitty waits a moment. “Believe him?”
I think about it. “Believe Alice?”
He shrugs. “Either way, we’re stuck in a bus with a bunch of nutcases.
That’s school trips for you.”
We take turns sleeping. I’m on first watch, too wired to rest. It’s too cold to leave the hatch open, so I don an extra fleece and ski jacket and brazen it out on the roof for an hour. The snow is light and my leg is too cold to hurt. The flames from the gas station have died down to a glow, but the acrid tang of the smoke remains. The alarm that rang out so shrill and
clear has been reduced to a broken-down and erratic buzz, like a cricket
with a microphone and Tourette’s.
Somebody will come. Eventually. When the bus doesn’t return to
school and we can’t be reached on the phone, the parents will start
having fits. There’ll be a search party, news reports — dammit, we’ll be D-List celebs by the time this is through. We just might need to make it through the night first, though. I scan the dark corners of the parking
lot for movement, feeling more like a target than a lookout, but all is still.
Through the trees and down the hill to the left, the lights outside the
Cheery Chomper have come on.
But they’re probably on a timer, right?
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. The loser
from the gas station? 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.
“Huh?” 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.”
Undead (ARC) Page 6
