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

by Odentz, Howard

  “I killed it,” he said quietly, then turned to face the rest of us.

  We were all staring at Freaky Big Bird, not comprehending what was happening. Any second, I expected her eyes to turn cloudy and the blood lust to rise inside her like a tidal wave. Nothing was happening. She was the same old Freaky Big Bird. My father poked at the bite in her shoulder and fresh tears sprung from her eyes.

  “It hurts,” she blubbered. “It hurts.”

  “I need a scissors,” he said. “Hydrogen peroxide and bandages.”

  None of us moved.

  “Now,” he shouted. “We’re in a Walmart. Go find them.”

  I remained rooted to the spot. I stared at Freaky Big Bird. She was supposed to be dead. She was supposed to be a poxer. I didn’t understand any of this. It’s like someone had changed the rules of soccer right in the middle of a game and now we could only use our hands instead of our feet.

  She didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.

  Finally, I heard Aunt Ella bark, “You heard the man. We need peroxide and bandages. I’m going out to the ambulance to see what we’ve got there. If you’re looking inside this place, go in groups. Who knows how many more zombies are in here. Look sharp, people.”

  My father bent over Freaky Big Bird as she cried. Prianka and Trina came up and stood next to me. So did Sanjay and Bullseye.

  “Why isn’t she changing?” whispered Bullseye. “She’s supposed to be changing.”

  Sanjay lifted Poopy Puppy to his ear and slowly nodded. “Poopy Puppy says ‘magic’.”

  Jimmy wheeled up beside us. “This is freaking me out, dude. This is really freaking me out.”

  I felt little fingers grasping my hand. They were Krystal’s. She had her signature two fingers stuck in her mouth, wet with saliva. She looked up at me and smiled. I saw the bandage on her arm where Trudy bit her when she was an ‘almost poxer’. The wound probably still throbbed.

  “Immune,” she giggled as she swung my hand back and forth. “Just like me?”

  “No,” I said blankly. “Not like you.” I looked at Trina, my eyes widening, the cogs in my brain clicking into place.

  Andrew cackled and flapped his wings. Newfie made a small woofing sound.

  “I think . . .” I began, then swallowed. “I think she’s immune like us.”

  52

  BACK IN NINTH grade there was a freak snow storm two days before Halloween. Snow in October is bizarre even for New England. Oh, sure, turkey day got snowed out once or twice that I remember, but Halloween? That was a weird one.

  The reason I remember the week of the storm was because of the damage it caused. Who would think twelve inches on the ground would create such a mess—but it did. You see, the leaves hadn’t completely fallen off the trees yet and the snow was heavy. You know—snowball snow. The kind of snow that you can make snowmen out of, or killer forts if you’re bored enough to roll that many boulders of snow out on your front lawn.

  The point is, the snow was so heavy on the trees, and the trees were so heavy because the leaves were still on them, that a lot of trees snapped in two like twigs. I remember going outside with my dad during the worst of it. As the snow poured down like a giant’s dandruff, the snapping of the trees sounded like gun shots. Branches fell everywhere—on rooftops, through windows, on my dad’s car, but most importantly, on the electric wires.

  We lost power during that freak snowstorm in October, and we were without power for a week.

  Do you know what it’s like not to have power for a week when you’re a ninth grader? It’s like the end of the world. There was no Internet, no television, no video games—nothing. After the second day of mind-numbing boredom, Trina and I started putting together jigsaw puzzles. My mom had a closet full of them from when we were ankle-biters. She used to make them while we napped. I guess we were light sleepers and making puzzles was about the quietest thing she could find to keep her mind busy and us snoozing.

  That’s what I was doing as I watched my dad use a tiny sewing kit to try and put together the pieces of Freaky Big Bird’s shoulder. I was puzzling things out. She cried, and Nedra Stein held her other hand while Aunt Ella tried to console her as my father patched her up. Trina stood beside me, both of us confused because the bony woman with the beady eyes and the hawk nose hadn’t changed into a monster.

  I hashed and rehashed what was happening in my mind. People who are immune to Necropoxy are only safe from the airborne parasites, but no one is safe from the bite. We knew that much. Anyone who has two parents who are immune is super immune, meaning that even the bite of a poxer can’t give them Necropoxy. Trina and I were like that—and we were supposed to be really rare. That’s why the helicopter people were chasing us. That’s why Diana wanted us back so badly.

  Then there’s what Freaky Big Bird had screamed at us during her Freaky Big Bird freak-out. I’m mad. I’m mad that I had to watch that old woman turn into a zombie before my eyes and there was nothing I could do about it. She’d been talking about her mother—the woman who had the misfortune of hatching such a beasty as Felice.

  “Are you adopted?” I blurted out to her as my father worked on her shoulder. Trina stomped hard on my foot and I bit my lip.

  “What? No,” Felice snapped. My father, Nedra, and Freaky Big Bird all gave us dirty looks, then Dad went back to work on her shoulder.

  Trina nudged me. “Come over here,” she hissed as she grabbed me by the arm and hauled me over to the front door.

  “What was that for?” I said.

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “She’s not adopted.”

  “Yeah, we just established that.”

  Trina folded her arms and looked out the window. Any second, the helicopter people could come back or jeeps could stream into the parking lot.

  “You know what I think?” I said to her, keeping my voice just above a whisper.

  “I think so,” she said. “Why don’t you try me?”

  “Okay,” my eyes darted from left to right. “Let me word purge and you tell me if I’m getting this right.”

  She nodded her head. “Go for it.”

  I took a deep breath. “There are fifteen of us here, right? The minivan family is six, not counting Newfie, Andrew, and the doll.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Dad, Aunt Ella, and Krystal make nine.”

  “Crap,” she whispered. We were thinking the same thing. Wonder twin powers activate.

  “That leaves Nedra, Eddie, Randy, Trudy, Freaky Big Bird, and Mom,” I began.

  Trina finished my sentence. “And all of them were experimented on while they were at Site 37. They all got sick and they all got better.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So maybe while Diana, Dr. Marks, and those other scientists were poking and prodding them, they somehow did something right and came up with a drug or a vaccine that actually makes them immune to the bite of a poxer. That’s what they’re trying to do anyway, isn’t it?”

  I remembered the poor woman that Diane had put in a room with a poxer while I was there. All the pretty eggheads had watched her with unfeeling eyes as that thing bit her, and then they timed how long it took for her to change.

  She wasn’t like Tattoo Guy. He changed quickly. That woman had taken over a minute to poxify. Felice was going on twenty minutes. Could it be possible that something they had done to her worked? Was she really super immune?

  “But is it all of them?” Trina asked. “Are they all immune?”

  I thought about that for a moment then shook my head. “No, they can’t be. If they were all immune then Tattoo Guy wouldn’t have turned when he got bit. They must have done different things to different people.”

  “Like a control group,” said Prianka. She had come up beside me and was listening intently as I tal
ked.

  “A what?”

  “See,” she said. “That’s why I always got better grades than you. This is science 101. In any experiment you test only a portion of your group, and don’t do anything to the rest. The ones you don’t do anything to become your control group.”

  Trina scrunched up her forehead like she was thinking too hard. “You mean some of them might be like us?” she said. “Super freaks?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Super freaky, huh?”

  “But why couldn’t it have been Randy or Eddie?” she whined “Hell, even Trudy. Why did it have to be Freaky Big Bird? I can’t stand her.”

  Our little tea party abruptly ended as Jimmy came fast down the wide aisle behind the row of check-out counters. “We’ve got more poxers,” he yelled as he came. “They got Eddie, too. Eddie and Randy.”

  No. It couldn’t be. Still, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think about what Prianka just said. If either of them were in the control group, we’d find out soon enough.

  53

  JIMMY, EDDIE WITH the fake hair, and Randy Stephens had found a bank of electrical boxes near the back of the store. Yeah, I know, they were supposed to be looking for peroxide and bandages for Felice, but when Randy saw the door with the Electric Room sign written on it with big red and white letters, he had to take a look.

  “I tried to stop him,” Jimmy huffed, the sweat on his forehead matting his red hair down. “I told him that we had to be careful because there was no way a place this big was poxer-free. Too many dark corners, you know? But he didn’t listen to me. He told me he just wanted to check on the boxes to see what kind of power we had.”

  “Idiot,” said Trina. “And he was doing so good.”

  “Not good enough,” I said. “What happened?”

  “So he opened the door and it turned out that there was some sort of break room there, with a soda machine and candy machine and a coffee maker. And poxers—there was a boatload of poxers.”

  “Damn,” whispered Trina.

  “That’s gross,” said Prianka. “What did you do?”

  “Well, Eddie froze and before I could even do anything, a dumpy old lady rolled out from under one of the break tables and bit him on the leg.”

  What a nightmare. Stupid adults—they think they know everything. This is a whole new world. How is it that a bunch of kids are able to make it on their own for over a week without getting bitten, but the adults come along and screw up the odds? Tattoo Guy dies. Dorcas gets shot. Freaky Big Bird gets attacked, and now Eddie?

  “What about Randy?” asked Prianka.

  “Here’s the thing,” said Jimmy. “Eddie didn’t turn right away, so Randy grabbed him, pulled him out of the room and shut the door. He thought Eddie was going to be like Felice. Besides, Eddie wasn’t screaming or anything. I think he was paralyzed with fear—almost catatonic. Randy was standing over him trying to shake him out of it, and I kept yelling for Randy to get away from him because he might turn into a poxer.”

  “And he did, didn’t he?” I said. I couldn’t believe this was happening. That lady popped into my head again—the one that was on the monitor at Site 37. Her name had been Mrs. Bijur. What did the pretty eggheads say? ‘Infestation in just over a minute, Diana. We’ve improved on the change rate’.

  “He turned,” said Jimmy, his voice shaking just a little. “He turned as Randy held him, trying to snap him out of it.”

  “In just over a minute,” I murmured.

  “Yeah,” said Jimmy. “Just about a minute. Then he bit Randy—maybe even more than once. So we started running back this way. Well I did. I think Randy was behind me.”

  “As one of them or one of us?” I said nervously.

  Jimmy didn’t have a chance to answer. Randy Stephens burst through a clothing rack about fifty feet away from us. He fell to the ground then got up. I could see in the gloom that he was covered in blood.

  “I’m bit,” he screamed. “I’m bit.”

  I looked from Freaky Big Bird to Randy to Freaky Big Bird. She hadn’t changed. Maybe he was going to be like her. I liked Randy. He seemed like a good guy. I didn’t want to have to burn him. I really didn’t.

  My mother and Trudy Aiken came out of one of the aisles, too, right near where Randy was. No, I thought. Not after everything. What if he changes right in front of her? What if he bites her? No, please. Not my mother. My feet felt like they were stuck to the ground—like I would never be able to lift them again. Please not my mother—anything but my mother.

  It turns out I didn’t have to. Randy didn’t change. My mother and Trudy grabbed him around the waist and helped him to where we were standing. My father sat him down and instructed him to pull off his shirt.

  “Where are the other poxers?” I said to Randy. “Where’s Eddie?”

  Randy looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “He got me three times before I managed to get him back inside the break room and shut the door,” he said. “Three times. I’m a goner for sure.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I lifted my hand and looked at Uncle Don’s watch. The seconds had already turned into minutes. He wasn’t changing. I didn’t think he was going to at all.

  My father set to washing his wounds with peroxide, and trying to clean him up. I’d love to say I stayed and watched, fascinated as Dad sewed the torn skin back together, but honestly, the whole blood and guts thing grossed me out.

  Call me a wussy. I don’t care.

  If we were in a movie, and we had to chop off the poxers heads in order to kill them, I don’t think I would have been able to do it. Blood skeeves me out. I could add that to the list of things I hated, along with the woods and snakes. Damn, I really was soft, wasn’t I? Trina definitely got the stones in our family. I’m just the smartass. Hey, we all have our strengths.

  In any case, it was sad that Eddie with the fake hair was gone. I didn’t really know him all that well, but Randy seemed to like him well enough, and he hadn’t had a major meltdown like Freaky Big Bird or eaten three times worth of rations like Trudy Aiken.

  He seemed like an all right guy. Now he was just a dead guy—another one to torch into a black smear on the floor.

  Prianka and Trina were by the front door with Jimmy. Bullseye and Sanjay were with them, too. I went over and joined them.

  “Well, there’s your control group,” I said to Prianka. “The way I see it, Diana’s people had experimented with at least three different concoctions while my mom and everyone were still locked up—probably even more. Maybe Tattoo Guy and some of the others that we saved were given nothing. Eddie and at least that woman that Diana had put in with the poxer at Site 37 were part of another group. They didn’t change as fast, but they still ended up poxers. Then Randy and Freaky Big Bird were part of a third group.”

  Prianka stared at me hard. “And they got it right with them,” she said. “They’re super immune, aren’t they?”

  “I think so.” I turned and looked at my mother and Trudy. I wondered which group they fell into. I hoped we would never have to find out. Immune or super immune, it really didn’t matter. The name of the game for everyone was not to get bit. Not ever.

  “You know what?” said Jimmy. “We totaled that place, that Site 37, before they even had a chance to finish their experiments.”

  He was right. I think we stumbled across their little science project and kicked their petri dishes in their faces, somehow screwing up what they were trying to do.

  They got it right. They actually got it right.

  “But if Diana knows she already has what she’s looking for—a way to make immune people super immune—then why is she still hunting me and Trina?”

  Everyone was quiet. Andrew ruffled his feathers. What Bullseye finally murmured was one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard him say.

/>   “She doesn’t know it works.”

  Prianka put her hand to her mouth. Trina’s eyes widened like she was going to say something but though better of it. I think some of her synapses weren’t quite firing right. It took her a second before it clicked. “It all makes sense now,” she said. “The experiments, everyone getting sick—it was because whatever they were given made them that way, but instead of turning them into poxers, it gave them super immunity.”

  Prianka nodded. “And Diana doesn’t even know it yet,” she said. “We have her experiment.” She tilted her head toward my dad and the other adults. He continued to patch up Randy, while Aunt Ella and Trudy and Nedra Stein consoled Freaky Big Bird. Krystal sat on the floor next to Aunt Ella playing with a knockoff Barbie that she found for her in the toy aisle.

  “We have her experiment,” I repeated, my mind reeling. “And she doesn’t even know it works.”

  54

  THERE WEREN’T ANY other poxers in Walmart besides the ones left in the break room. We walked up and down the aisles, making sure the place was secure.

  When we were finally ready, we left Sanjay with Aunt Ella, and us kids went back to the break room armed with paper, matches, and fire extinguishers, and we snuffed everyone out.

  Somehow, we all kept avoiding Eddie until the end. Finally, Trina, her lips buttoned tight, torched him, and Prianka sprayed the blazing pieces that were left with white foam.

  It was a miracle we didn’t burn the place down.

  The whole time, my mind kept racing with the same two words over and over again. Super immune, super immune, super immune.