The Dead (a Lot) Trilogy (Book 1): Wicked Dead

by Odentz, Howard

  They hurt my sister.

  43

  FIRE IS A HORRIBLE thing—a dragon on a pyro-maniacal rampage. Fire is death and destruction and despair. Fire held Trina’s hands in its burning claws for scant seconds and did its damage. I could tell she was using every ounce of willpower to fight back the tears.

  Trina didn’t usually cry like some girls. It wasn’t her thing. Heather Wallace in seventh grade social studies was a crier. If Mrs. Kaplan said something she didn’t like, or if someone made fun of her because she sort of looked like a ferret, she would cry. It didn’t matter when. She would just let loose with the waterworks and we all had to sit there and suffer in soggy silence until she was done leaking.

  Trina wasn’t like that. She was tough. I could see her angry red hands with the blisters bubbling to the surface. They looked bad. Why didn’t she let go of the burning paper when I told her to? Why did she have to be so freaking stubborn?

  Oh yeah, I forgot. She’s Trina, that’s why. Look what she got for it—a forest fire that was going to burn, unchecked, for who knows how long.

  I thought about Black Point Fort as we ran. I wondered which site it was—twenty-four, maybe? Seventeen? Did it even matter? Besides, what was that stunt with the flying poxer? Whose brilliant idea of security was that?

  What about the people who went down in the helicopter? There had to be at least two—one to fly the thing and one to shoot the spear at the poxer. Now they were gone in a fiery blast and the forest was burning like someone had poured lighter fluid on it.

  Trees that weren’t plastered with the sticky stuff were burning like dried tinder. It had been a really hot summer. I couldn’t even remember the last time it rained. Once, in August, Trina and I and a bunch of friends went tubing down in Satan’s Kingdom in Connecticut. The water was so low that our butts practically scraped on the bottom of the river bed. Now, the dry, hot summer had turned into a crisp, dry fall, and all that dried stuff was burning—and we were running.

  At one point, Trina tripped over her own feet and she fell to the ground. I grabbed for her.

  “Are you . . .?” I began.

  “I’m okay,” she blurted out. “Get off me. I’m okay.”

  “Oh really? Look at your hands.”

  “I’m fine,” she growled and staggered to her feet. She still held them out in front of her like claws. They must have hurt something fierce. It wasn’t like her hands were charred or anything. They just looked really red. All I could think was how lucky we were to find the ambulance. There would be a salve in there, and maybe some bandages.

  My first day of nursery school I met this girl named Amy something-or-other who had a bandage on her hand. She told me that she touched the stove and that’s how she got it. So, of course, being the five-year-old nimrod that I was, I went home and turned on the burner. When I saw the coils glow red I put my palm on them just like Amy did.

  Ow, ow, ow, and Amy and I had matching bandages for a couple weeks.

  Trina was going to have bandages on her hands for a while. Someone was going to have to step up to the plate and take over her reign as the tough-as-nails part of the gang. Was that going to have to be me? There were a lot of things I was, but tough as nails was definitely not on the list. Hello, I was the one who used to get pushed into his locker by Chuck Peterson.

  The fire crackled and burned behind us, but we were already past the birch tree and near Ross Esi Allan III’s cellar hole. The others had stopped on the path and were waiting for us.

  “Your hands,” exclaimed Jimmy when he saw what happened to Trina.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped at him. “The poxer’s gone, isn’t it?”

  She was right. The poxer was gone. So was our peace-and-quiet morning. No quick dips in the reservoir. No alone time with just us kids. Now, all we could hope to do was to get back to Swifty’s as quickly as possible and somehow load everyone up, sick or not, and get out of Hollowton, Massachusetts without frying. If whoever was at Black Point Fort wasn’t on to us before, they sure as hell were now. That meant that we had to go. We had to go right away.

  Newfie made a chuffing sound and pricked up his ears. My heart sank. I didn’t want to look where he was looking. I didn’t want to see what the fire had stirred up.

  Still, I had to.

  “Oh, no,” said Jimmy, his eyes growing wide.

  “Crap,” I said without even looking. What was it going to be now—some of the people from the fort? Poxers? Lions and tigers and bears?

  It turned out I was right on the last one. A black bear ran out of the forest about a hundred feet behind us. It stared at us, its slick fur glistening and its eyes wild with fear. The bear was framed on the path by the glowing flames behind it. Then a deer ran past the bear—then another, and another.

  “They’re running from the flames,” said Bullseye.

  “Like Bambi,” whispered Sanjay. “Bambi is the title character in a 1942 animated film produced by Walt Disney. It was based on a book by Austrian author Felix Salten.” His eyes were wide as he watched the wildlife flee in terror.

  “Well, yeah. Just like,” Bullseye said.

  Then Newfie began to growl. Sure, he was practically the size of a black bear. I just didn’t want him to tangle with one.

  “Keep moving,” I barked like a commando, and grabbed Newfie’s collar. I started trotting down the dirt road, followed by the rest. Prianka now had Sanjay pressed to her chest, his arms and legs wrapped around her shoulders and waist. He stared back at our friend on the trail.

  “Ursus americanus is a medium-sized bear native to North America,” he said. “It is omnivorous, with a diet varying greatly depending on season and location.”

  “But do they eat people?” I chattered as I jogged. Wouldn’t it be ironic to be eaten by a bear in a world full of zombies? Newfie ran next to me, but I could tell that he wanted nothing more than to turn around and face the bear, head-on.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Prianka as she clutched her brother. Poopy Puppy bobbed in his hand.

  “Sometimes they become attracted to human communities because of the immediate availability of food,” he said. “Poopy Puppy says so.”

  “Is Poopy Puppy ever wrong?” I asked. Somewhere behind us I heard a crash, which signaled the first of the trees to fall to the ground. I smelled smoke on the wind. This was not good. Not good at all.

  Before Sanjay could answer, the wail of a siren pierced the forest, getting louder and louder as we ran.

  “Now what?” gasped Jimmy as he pumped his wheelchair with his muscled arms.

  We all slowed again and looked back. The bear ran off into the woods, and the flames stretched across our field of vision. It’s not bad enough that Necropoxy had to kill all the people. The idiots who did all this had to destroy the forests, too. What was next? Kill all the little fishies in the ocean? This was ridiculous.

  How could this be happening?

  How could we have just stumbled on another site?

  For a moment there, I gave up. My legs stopped pumping and my eyes grew heavy. It would have been so easy just to give in. It would have been so easy to let Diana win.

  The siren cut through me with a knife’s precision. It was probably telling everyone at the site that we were here. They were all jumping into their little military jeeps right now and were coming for us. That’s exactly what was happening. I knew it. They were coming for us and I just wanted to give in.

  The moment quickly passed and I turned hard. Prianka saw my mouth turn down and my whole expression change into a scowl.

  “What?” she asked.

  What, nothing.

  “Game on,” I whispered into the smoky wind, the heat billowing toward us and making my forehead break out in a sweat. “Game freaking on.”

  44

 
I BURST THROUGH the door of Swifty’s and yelled, “We have to go.” Most everyone was sitting up. Their skin looked less gray. Dad had removed the fluid bags and some of them were sipping at cups of something hot. Still, they looked scared.

  The siren blared through the late morning. I didn’t know how big the fire was going to get or how far the burning tendrils would extend. All I knew was that the store was made out of wood. With just a little bit of wind, the fire was going to jump the road and the little fishing bear was going to fry along with every other tacky thing in the place.

  Trina was right behind me, her hands beet red.

  “What happened?” my father exclaimed as he ran to her.

  “I got a boo-boo,” she said with a sheepish grin. “Can you fix me up?”

  “She’s an idiot,” I seethed. “There was a poxer. She torched it. It started a fire. We have to go.” I sounded so mechanical—so matter-of-fact. “The woods are burning. I don’t know how long it will be before the fire gets here.”

  I didn’t wait for either of them to respond. Somewhere in the back of my head, my brain whispered something about this whole past week being a nightmare, but I shoved the thoughts down deep. There was something more important.

  My mother was awake. Her eyes looked bleary but she was up and sipping a cup of something I assumed Aunt Ella or Dorcas made for her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “I am now,” she said. She smiled, but it was more like a pained frown than anything.

  “We have to go. There’s a fire.”

  “Who set off the alarm?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. I guess Trina had technically set off the alarm—or was it the poxer? Maybe it was the helicopter dive-bombing and exploding in the midst of the sticky covered trees. The real truth was that the alarm was probably coming from Black Point Fort and it wasn’t a fire alarm at all. It was a signal probably roughly interpreted as ‘intruder alert, intruder alert’.

  Randy Stephens sat next to Eddie with the fake hair. His arm was draped around Eddie’s shoulder. Wow, fast mover. The two of them just looked at me and nodded, then both helped each other stand on weak legs.

  “Hey kid,” wheezed Dorcas as she struggled to help Nedra Stein get up. “Give an old broad a hand.”

  “Come on, Grandma,” I said. “You’re tougher than that.” She snorted and I reached my hand out to Nedra and pulled her to her feet.

  Krystal was with Freaky Big Bird and Trudy Aiken. Trudy gently rubbed little Krystal’s bandaged arm. She didn’t want another bite, that’s for sure. Somehow, Trudy had bonded with her breakfast and it was all good.

  “Time to go,” I said to them. They didn’t ask why. They just nodded their heads and began to move. Aunt Ella came in the back door holding a steaming pot of water, saw that we were all moving, turned right around, opened the door, and threw the boiling water into the wind. She didn’t asked questions. She just knew.

  As a matter of fact, none of the adults asked why. They just solemnly gathered their things together, a little weak from a night of almost becoming poxers, and readied themselves to get gone.

  Prianka, Bullseye, and Jimmy went through the aisles, grabbing anything that might be of use. Everyone was very orderly—very calm. Aunt Ella began gathering up the quilts and folding them neatly into tidy squares. I didn’t have to ask, I just knew that she meant to take them. Just because it was unseasonably warm out, didn’t mean that it was going to stay that way for long. This was New England—the land where people use both their air conditioners and their heaters in the same day.

  The quilts we could use.

  Right now, all I wanted was some of the penny candy, but Sanjay beat me to it. He had a Swifty’s bag with a little emblem of the fishing bear on it, and he was going from bin to bin, grabbing handfuls of licorice nibs and strips of colored dots on paper, and stuffing them into the bag.

  Freaky Big Bird took little Krystal by the hand. “Let’s go outside, dear,” she said to her. I felt a twinge of sadness. It must be nice to be taken care of. I wasn’t sure I would ever feel like that again. When you’re a kid, everything is done for you. If you want food, your parents make it for you. If you want to be comforted, there’s always a lap to crawl on. Right now, it seemed like I would never have that wide-eyed, trusting feeling of safety. My life in Littleham was decades away and the future felt like it could be snuffed out in a heartbeat.

  I heard a hrumpf, and turned to see Trudy Aiken. She looked downright awful. No one had bothered to tell her that she had dried blood on her mouth from when she bit Krystal. It crusted on her lips and a little on her chin. By now, the blood had turned brown. She heaved herself to her feet, steadying herself against the wall as she stood. The hot cup of liquid in her hand almost spilled, but she managed not to drop it. I pulled a paper towel off of a roll that was sitting on the counter and quietly slipped over to her.

  “Trudy?” I said. “Ms. Aiken?” I gently took her cup from her and dipped one end of the paper towel into it, then dabbed softly at her chin with it. “You dribbled,” I whispered, and she smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said as I wiped the crusty gore away from her chin and her lips.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes,” she said. “What is it?”

  I didn’t know quite what I was going to say until I said it. Then it just spilled out. “What was it like?” I asked her with my eyes down. I couldn’t look her in the face.

  “Being sick?” she asked. Her chubby cheeks flushed against the fading gray of her skin.

  That’s not what I wanted to know. I forced myself to ask the question. “Biting Krystal,” I asked, just above a whisper. “What made you do it?”

  She licked her lips and looked away. It’s not that I needed to know. I just couldn’t imagine being overtaken by Necropoxy. I couldn’t even pretend to know what it felt like to want to take a bite out of another human being.

  “Hungry,” she said as though she was more than a little embarrassed. “And trust me, I know what hungry feels like.” She wrung her hands together over her stomach. “But it was more than that,” she said. “I was ravenous. I’ve been ravenous before. When I get that way, I’ll always turn to macaroni and cheese. It’s the only thing that takes that feeling away.” Her eyes started to leak but she didn’t make any attempt to wipe away the tears. “This was different though. The hunger was all consuming, and it wasn’t for macaroni and cheese or cake or pizza. It was for flesh. I couldn’t think of anything else. It was like my very existence depended on eating her. I can still feel it inside of me—that desire—but it’s fading away.”

  I was almost sorry I asked. The hurt on her face was painful to see. I felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for all of them. All I could manage was a small smile. I finished dabbing at the corners of her mouth, removing any evidence of what had happened that morning. Thankfully, Krystal would most likely forget all but the vaguest memory of being bitten. If she ever had a chance to grow up, maybe she would someday wear a small scar on her arm, faded to white, that she could proudly show as a badge of honor. She survived an almost-poxer attack. No one would be able to say that but her.

  As I turned away, Trudy grabbed my arm.

  “We have to stop this,” she said. “We have to stop this madness.”

  As if I could. I was just a boy. It didn’t matter that I had rough stubble on my face from not shaving for a few days. At the end of the day, I was just a boy, and she was a fat lady.

  How could we stop anything?

  45

  SMOKE WAFTED ACROSS the parking lot as the fire roared in the woods. We couldn’t see it yet, but we knew it was coming in fast. The siren blared through the morning. It was like someone was pouring acid in my ear. All I wanted was for it to stop. Any second now, I expected those jeeps in the front of Black
Point Fort to come zooming down the road, filled with military guys like Luke and Cal. They were the two brilliant minds we found in Purgatory Chasm—you know, the kind of guys who weren’t members of MENSA. The kind of guys who shoot first and ask questions later.

  Most of us were already outside. Both of Trina’s hands were wrapped in bandages. She leaned against the ambulance with a sour look on her face. Jimmy and Bullseye were putting bags of supplies in the minivan. Freaky Big Bird and Nedra Stein stood with Krystal by the bus. Sanjay, Andrew, and Newfie were out by the road, solemnly watching the smoke rise through the trees. He stretched his arms out wide. I could only assume he was chanting some sort of nonsense to keep us safe. Hey, we needed all the help we could get.

  Eddie with the fake hair looked scared. He was leaning with his hands against the porch railing near the little fishing bear. Randy stood next to him, almost a foot taller. “I’m not cut out for this,” he said to Randy. Randy didn’t respond. He looked sort of lost. I guess they all did—the adults I mean. All I knew was that Eddie had better figure out a way to get ‘cut out’ for this soon, because there wasn’t any alternative. You run and you fight—you win or you die. Those were our only choices. You burn your relatives and your friends when they get bitten, and you leave baby poxers by the side of the road, no matter how desperate they seem. You shoot old men in pharmacies and you leave them for dead, with only a bottle of pills to make the pain go away.

  You run and run and run so no one can ever catch you—or you don’t live.

  Prianka came up to me with a folded pamphlet in her hand. “Look at this,” she said as she opened it up. It was a map of the Quabbin Reservoir. She took it off the tourist rack in Swifty’s—the one that was filled with brochures about all the cool places in the area that tourists were never going to visit again.