Even Andrew—no matter how annoying I thought birdbrain was.
“I’m glad it’s not October-cold,” said Prianka as we walked holding hands.
I kicked at a pile of leaves and they scattered in front of us. “This used to be my favorite time of year.”
“Not me,” she said. “The colors are pretty, but all that means is that everything’s dying.”
“That’s a little bit of an understatement.”
She smiled. I liked when she smiled. I’m such a jerk. I could have been dating Prianka Patel all through middle school and through most of high school. We could have been like this for years already, and I think I would have been just fine with that—chilly moments and all.
“Did you ever think we would be doing this?” she asked as we fell further behind the others.
“Doing what?” I said. “Surviving the zombie apocalypse?”
She smiled. “Well that, too,” she said. “But did you ever think that the two of us would be walking through the woods holding hands?”
I shrugged. The truth was I never did, but I was a quick study. This was a ‘what would Jimmy say’ moment.
“Nope,” I said, then pushed her into a pile of leaves and fell down next to her. “I thought we would be doing this,” and planted one on her. The next thing I knew we were giggling and laughing and throwing big wads of leaves at each other. Newfie dove into the pile after us, woofing and slobbering with his giant tongue.
It did occur to me, for about a nanosecond, that this was so wrong—so random. My dad was back at Swifty’s with Aunt Ella, watching over my mom and a bunch of other sick strangers, along with an orphaned four-year-old and a cranky senior citizen. It didn’t seem right that I should be having fun, but I just couldn’t help it. I was having a good time, and I was with Prianka and it felt great.
“No PDA,” yelled Trina from a hundred feet up the path. Suddenly, she abruptly turned to her left and walked right off the hard ground into the woods.
“Hey,” I yelled, but she didn’t yell back. I got up, covered in leaf litter, and held out my hand for Prianka. “Hey,” I yelled again after Trina.
“Look at this,” she yelled back. Jimmy turned his wheelchair toward the sound of her voice and Bullseye and Sanjay left the road, too. Damn, I really didn’t like the woods. What the hell was she looking at? What the hell was everyone looking at?
When we finally caught up to Jimmy he pointed off to where they were standing.
“Cellar hole,” Bullseye turned and yelled back to us.
“Cool,” I said. “So?”
Trina walked back out of the woods, brushing orange leaves off her shoulders and picking a few out of her hair.
“So,” she said. “This cellar hole has a door.”
37
HERE’S THE THING about doors. You’re supposed to walk through them for new experiences, you know, to meet new people or learn new things. On the flip side, sometimes doors are there to keep things locked away: icky stuff, stuff you have no business knowing about.
I felt sick to my stomach when I saw the door in the ground, if you could call it a ‘real’ door. The rotted wooden entrance looked like it was meant for a barn. There were holes in it where mice or chipmunks had probably chewed the wood away. The bottom was splintered and worn and the top didn’t quite cover the dark cellar hole that lay beyond.
How freak-show can you get? The door was propped up against a mound of dirt and rocks at the bottom of a little ditch, which was lined with moss-covered bricks that were probably made with straw and mud hundreds of years ago. If I was on a field trip from school, the door and the cellar hole might have been marginally interesting. Considering the last week, it was flat out scary.
“Yeah . . . no,” I said.
“Baby,” sneered Trina.
“Yup. This is the part in the movie where the audience yells at the teenagers for being really, really stupid.”
Trina rolled her eyes.
“Come on,” said Prianka. “You just said it was about time for an adventure.”
“I was kidding,” I answered her, which wasn’t exactly true. I hadn’t been kidding about walking down to Black Point Fort to wash the grime out of my hair. Frankly, this was probably the last time this season I’d be able to go into the water without turning completely blue.
Still, I wasn’t up for exploring creepy holes in the ground. Hey, if everyone else wanted to live out their own little Blair Zombie Project, have at it—just not me.
“What is it?” Jimmy said as I walked back to the dirt road.
My hands were shoved deep in my pockets. “Sorry, man. I’ve done a lot of things in the past week, but I refuse to knowingly walk through a doorway to hell in the middle of the woods. Nope—this is where I get off the ride.”
“Really? There’s an intact door?” he gasped, totally ignoring what I said. “That is so cool.” Jimmy got this excited look in his eyes. “I gotta see.” He pumped his wheels into the brush, the treads gaining traction the harder he pushed.
Great. Just great. Leave me all alone, why don’t you? Even Bullseye, Sanjay, Andrew, and Newfie had veered from the path. I hung back and watched from a distance as they all gathered around the hole in the ground like it was the secret way into an awesome rave.
“I thought we were going to wash our hair,” I screamed after them, but everyone just ignored me.
That’s when I heard it off in the distance—the familiar sound that had been dogging us ever since we left Aunt Ella’s house.
Helicopter blades.
I turned in a circle trying to pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from, but I couldn’t get a fix on it. Wherever the helicopter was, it was far away. Still, anything within earshot was too close.
I looked up into the sky. For the most part brightly-colored orange and red trees loomed over the path, but we were still somewhat exposed in the sunny spots. If anyone bothered to fly down low, they’d spot us for sure. Then I thought about Mom and Dad back at Swifty’s. As long as they stayed inside I’m pretty sure they would be safe. An ambulance, a bus, and a minivan sitting in a parking lot wouldn’t call any attention at all. At least I didn’t think they would. There were millions of parking lots with zillions of abandoned vehicles in them. All I could hope was that the helicopter people thought the same thing.
Still, it would have been nice to go down to the water with my girlfriend and just be a normal teenager for an hour or two.
Do I hear a half hour?
How about two more minutes?
One more minute?
I stomped the ground hard. There wasn’t a wall around to punch, so the dirt was the next best thing.
Whatever.
I grimaced and made my way back off the trail toward the cellar hole.
“You can’t just break it down,” I heard Jimmy pleading as I got close to them. “It’s historic.”
“You might have to break it down,” I said as I walked up to them.
Trina didn’t look at me. “Nice of you to join us.”
“Come on Tripp, man,” whined Jimmy. “Be on my side on this one. We can’t go around destroying historically significant stuff.” He pointed at the falling down door. “That’s part of our heritage.”
I snorted. “Yeah,” I said. “And so is surviving the apocalypse. Key word—surviving.” I pointed up to the sky. “Listen.”
Everyone stopped talking. The faint droning of the helicopter cut through the morning like a persistent mosquito in the ear. I remember there used to be mosquitos on the soccer fields all the time. One would inevitably glom on to me and buzz around my ear the whole time I was out there. No matter where I ran or which part of the field I ended up on, that damn mosquito would always be there.
The helicopters were starting to become like that—a perpetual nuisance.
“See what happens when you step off the path?” I said. There’s a science fiction story by this old guy that we read in something like seventh grade. It was
about a bunch of people who paid a boat load of money to get sent back in time to go on a hunting trip. The catch was that they could only kill things that were supposed to die anyway. If they killed something that wasn’t supposed to die, they would end up altering all of history. The hunters were told not to step off the designated path, but in the end, one moron did. He stepped on a low-flying butterfly and altered all of history, forever.
That’s what happens when you step off the path. You wreck everything. I know it’s dumb to think if we had just kept walking to Black Point Fort, the helicopters wouldn’t have come, but we didn’t and they did.
Maybe I just wanted to blame someone for our crappy luck.
“What do we do?” cried Bullseye, his eyes wide. Bullseye swung wildly between being a kid and a teenager. One minute he was killing poxers with the best of them, the next, he was scared out of his mind or pissed off. I was going to have to keep an eye on him. Once again, I had that strange feeling like everyone was waiting for me to make a decision, and I didn’t want to be the leader. I wanted to play video games and eat Funyuns and ice cream. I didn’t want to be doing this anymore.
“Okay,” Jimmy said reluctantly. “There’s no sense in history if no one’s alive to care about it. Let’s break the door down.”
“With what?” I said. “Want me to see how hard I can roll you into it?”
Trina smacked me in the back of the head and I yelped.
“I got this one,” said Prianka. Okay—not quite sure what she meant by that, but I was all ears even though they were still ringing. She stepped down the slope into the ditch and put her shoulder to the door and pushed. The rotted wood heaved a little under her weight, but not enough to make me think that Prianka Patel could knock the door down.
Still, Prianka surprised me a lot this past week, so I was only slightly impressed when she did another ninja move like she pulled when we saved her from the Mug N’ Muffin back in Littleham.
She stepped back, twirled and kicked with her leg straight out. The door gave way in one big chunk as though someone had loosened it for her and she was the final bit of force it needed to open—like a pickle jar or a bottle of soda.
“Awesome,” murmured Bullseye as the door fell inwards.
Yup, Prianka was pretty awesome. What we found inside definitely was not.
39
“POXER!” PRIANKA screamed, but she was wrong. The smell was the tip-off. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. There was a dead guy propped up against the dirt wall in the cellar hole with half of his head gone. It’s not like a chunk had fallen off and slipped to the floor. His skull was just plain missing, as though it exploded into a million bloody little pieces and floated away on the wind.
There was a sleeping bag there, too, along with a kerosene lantern and a bag full of food with the Swifty’s logo on it—the creepy little fishing bear. The air was filled with those fat black flies that look like they’re bloated with juice.
A gun was still in his hand.
I covered my nose. Death is a horrible smell. It’s rank and dirty and makes you want to scrub the scent off your skin.
“Bullseye, keep Sanjay back,” I barked at him.
“No problem,” he grimaced. “No problem at all.” He guided Sanjay away from the cellar hole.
The buzz of the helicopter was starting to get louder, and with each passing second I was getting more and more skittish. The helicopter people could see the path, but they really couldn’t see through the canopy of trees, could they? Even if they could, they wouldn’t land here, would they?
“It reeks,” complained Trina.
“Yeah, dead people do that,” I said.
Jimmy didn’t go down into the hole. His bubbly balloon of enthusiasm was completely deflated. Frankly, I didn’t blame him.
Prianka scrunched up her nose and doggedly move forward. “There’s a note,” she said and grabbed the piece of paper off the floor in front of the dead guy. We all backed out of the dank cellar, gulping at the fresh, clean air of the forest—then we gathered around her.
The note said:
Dear whoever you are,
I thought I could do it. I really did. But when it comes right down to it, I don’t want to live in a world filled with zombies. Please take care of my store. If my pals knew I closed up during leaf peeper season they’d say I’d gone nuts.
I believe in reincarnation. Hopefully I’ll get another chance at life. Next time I want to be a dog. All they do is sleep, eat, poop, and have fun.
I’m not having fun.
Ross Esi Allan III
So, this was the guy who owned Swifty’s. I knew it was strange when we first got to the store and there was a closed sign on the door. It’s September—that’s when Massachusetts is at its busiest. Carloads of tacky tourists pour in, wanting stellar pictures of dying trees and steaming cups of hot apple cider. No one with something to sell closes up shop this time of year—no one.
“He killed himself,” whispered Prianka. “That’s so sad.”
“If I was all alone I’m sure the thought would have crossed my mind, too,” I said. “There’s just so much freakiness a person can take before you go all nutball.” An image of Roger Ludlow’s face bloomed behind my eyes.
Prianka looked like she was about to cry. “It’s too bad he didn’t stay in the store,” she said. “We would have found him eventually.”
“Killing yourself is cowardly,” announced Trina with her hands on her hips. “Suicide is weak.”
Jimmy grabbed for her hand. “Not all of us are as strong as you, babe,” he said. “What would I have done in that sound booth if you guys hadn’t come along?”
I cleared my throat. “Ahem.”
“If Tripp hadn’t come along,” he corrected himself. “I might not even have had a choice.”
Trina just shook her head.
We were all quiet, the steady drone of the helicopter getting louder and louder.
“Helicopter,” said Sanjay, stating the obvious. “Poopy Puppy says so.”
Still, no one moved. I don’t know what everyone was waiting for. Diana was looking for me and Trina. Actually, the helicopter people were looking for any survivors, as long as they were young enough and healthy enough.
I looked at our little group. Young and healthy technically counted Jimmy out. For that matter, Sanjay wasn’t part of the new world order either.
“Damn you, Diana.” I whispered under my breath. I looked back down into the darkness of the cellar hole. The smell was still ripe in my nose—I could almost taste it on my tongue. I closed my eyes and spoke. “We have to hide,” I said, staring at the gaping wound in the ground.
“What, in there?” Trina gasped.
“We have to,” agreed Jimmy.
“I’ll puke,” she cried.
“I hate to say this,” I said, “but it’s better than the alternative.”
Trina’s eyes welled up with tears. It always freaked me out when she did that. This constant flip-flop between Amazon queen and frightened little girl was too much for me to wrap my head around.
“How do we know they’re even bad guys?” she cried. “What if they’re good guys with helicopters? People who can help us.”
“We can figure that out in the hole,” I said flatly.
Prianka brushed by Trina and went over to Sanjay, bent down, and talked to him quietly. He held Poopy Puppy to his ear and nodded his head. This was way more than a little kid should have to go through. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair—but life isn’t fair. Not lately, anyway.
Jimmy was wearing a backpack that had his towel and some poxer-torching supplies.
“I don’t suppose you have a flashlight in there?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said as he slipped it off and reached his arm into the bag. “I have this little thing with batteries that makes light. Is that what you’re looking for?”
“You’re the man,” I said.
Jimmy turned the flashlight
on and pointed down the cellar hole. As we slowly made our way inside, we all tried to ignore Ross Esi Allan III, sitting there with half a head. The beam of the flashlight trailed off into the gloom. Jimmy whistled. “Wow. I’ve heard about the Quabbin cellar holes before. I just thought that they were little dugouts in the ground. This one looks big.”
I sighed. “Time for that adventure, Pri?”
She didn’t look happy—neither did Trina—but in the end, the helicopter blades whirring away overhead forced us to ground along with the flies and the dead guy and God knows what else.
Do I hear werewolf, anybody? Vampire? Ghost? Oh yeah, we had enough monsters to contend with without worrying about the fake ones.
39
I THINK I HAVE coward genes. I don’t like blood. I hate the woods. I’m not particularly fond of the dark. Snakes are nasty and real dead-dead people freak the crap out of me. Weirdly enough, poxers I can handle. They’re just kind of gross and definitely ugly.
“Close your eyes, Sanjay,” said Prianka as we shuffled by Ross Esi Allan III and his final resting place. “Breathe out of your mouth.”
Jimmy shone the flashlight around. The cellar hole was damp and smelled of earth and death, which is sort of like cold cuts that have been left in the back of the refrigerator way too long.
Underground consisted of three rooms—the first one was where the dead-dead guy bought it. There was a second room behind the first, littered with leaves and small animal bones. Finally, off to the left was a small room not much bigger than a closet. There was an old wooden shelf in it with a few glass jars sitting on rotted slats. Their contents were black with age.
In another life, it would have been a killer hideout—a place where kids could hang and creep each other out with spooky stories about things like, well, the Donkey Man.
“This is cool,” said Jimmy as he pointed the flashlight around. “Big.”
“It’s gross,” snapped Trina. “And dead guy smells like ass.”
The Dead (a Lot) Trilogy (Book 2): Wicked Dead Page 16
