Get a grip. Concentrate. My dad always told me I have fast reactions — that’s what makes me a good skier — and now I’ve got to test them to the max. The driver’s nearly upon me. Just a couple of feet separate us.
Now!
I dodge into the seat on my left, throwing a leg over the seats in front, set to scramble past. But the driver isn’t close enough to dodge; he simply sidesteps into the corresponding seat a row farther down, like a well-trained chess piece. Oh, goody. I dart back into the aisle, then across to the right-hand side, clambering forward over a row before he can react. For a second I think I’ve made it. Then he lunges at me.
Without thinking I thrust the ski pole into his chest. It sinks in surprisingly easily with a clunk, momentarily pinning him like an indignant beetle. He swipes it away, and his sudden strength is shocking. I let go of the pole and it falls out of reach. He lunges again, spit flying out of his mouth in cloudy, viscous globules. I flatten myself against the window, my back slipping on the pathetic little nylon curtain that serves no purpose whatsoever except to hinder attempted escapes from flesh-eating monsters. As I slide down the window like broken egg, I notice that the ski pole has wedged between my row of seats and the one in front, making a feeble barrier between the bus driver and me. He presses against it, frustrated as he reaches for me, his fingers a few inches from my face. If I die right here, right now, I will be ashamed. What a fail. Struck down and eaten by a bus driver, for crap’s sake, in Scotland, on a lame school trip. Just as the pole starts to buckle and his fingers clasp my hair, I throw myself over into the seat in front — and roll into the aisle.
I embrace the floor for a millisecond, willing it to open up and engulf me. “Move!” Alice screams from above.
I look up. The driver is bearing down on me, teeth gnashing. Alice screams again. Distracted, he straightens and swipes up at the hatch with his good arm.
It is time to stand up. But as I make to move, something attaches itself to my jacket. My hands scrabble underneath me. My ski pass has caught on something in the floor. I can’t move.
A slam from above means the hatch is closed. I am on my own. Hey, they held out longer than I’d figured.
Desperately, I tug at the plastic pass. A silver ring pops up from the rubber floor. I stare at it. I know what that is. I pull on the silver ring with all my might and a trapdoor lifts up, slamming into the driver’s face as he dives down to reach me. A black hole opens up underneath and I slither into it headfirst.
A thankfully brief fall, and cushioned by something squashy. I’m in the luggage hold, on top of an open suitcase — its lid removed to make the back window barricade.
It’s dark but there’s a rectangle of light above me. The trapdoor was not hinged; it came off completely before it whacked the driver in the face, and it is only a matter of time before his befuddled brain realizes I am still within reach.
Scrambling over the suitcases, spilling their contents on to the floor, I make for the doors of the hold. Doors in a hold are not designed for escape from the inside. I bang on the side of the bus with my fist, praying that Smitty will realize and open them up.
Above me looms the driver, staring blankly into the hole. The noise attracted him. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
“Hey!” I move farther down the bus, through souvenirs and dirty laundry, slapping the doors. “I’m in here! Get me out!”
A crash behind me tells me I’m no longer alone in the hold. Panic, rising up like cold water through my body, threatens to overwhelm me. Wedging my backside against a suitcase, I kick the door with both legs, then again, and again, and again. In the gloom, the driver begins to swim through the sea of suitcases in my direction.
I kick again.
Just as I’m convinced I’m never going to see daylight again, the door opens and light floods into the hold. I roll blindly toward the light and fall with a crunch into the snow.
Smitty stands there, looking down at me. But not for long. A moan erupts from within the hold. He goes to slam the door.
“Wait!” I scramble to my feet. “We need to get him out.” I pull Smitty a few feet away from the hold, and the driver emerges. “Keep on your feet. He’s not too fast, but he’s stronger than you think.”
“Oi, you soft git!” calls Smitty to the driver, who is finding his feet in the snow. “Pick on someone your own size.”
The driver stumbles toward us.
“You distract him while I climb back in,” I babble. Smitty looks confused. “The door is still barricaded. Shut the luggage hold after me and get ready to jump in through the front door.”
Unbelievably, Smitty does as he is told. He leaps through the snow, arms circling above him like it’s all an elaborate dance routine.
“Come to me! Come to me!” he sings, then bends over, gathers snow into a ball, and throws it into the driver’s blackened face. The driver’s moans are momentarily muffled, but he plows toward Smitty regardless. “Oops!” Smitty cries in mock concern. “Excuse me, mister, I don’t know what came over me.”
What a maniac. I struggle to keep pace with him as the driver staggers closer. Two lunatics and one monster, galloping through the snow, I don’t think my mother quite envisaged this scenario when she signed the check for the school trip.
As the driver gets within a few feet of us, I dodge around him and run flat out to the bus. Throwing myself back into that dark confined space goes against every instinct, but I have to get on board and open the door. I can only hope that Smitty doesn’t get too carried away with driver-taunting to remember to shut the hold after me.
Back in the aisle, I fix the trapdoor shut over the hole in the floor: better safe than sorry. Then I run to the front door, swiftly remove the snowboard, and press the lever to open.
In the parking lot, Smitty’s driver-baiting is getting more and more dangerous. He lunges at the driver, then quickly spins away before the driver can grab him.
“Smitty! Close the hold!” I shout, a fist of fear and frustration rising in my chest. He ignores me, obviously finding himself too funny for words.
If you want something done right . . . I rush back out into the snow and slam the doors to the hold shut. Attracted by the noise, the driver does his head-spinning trick — starting to get old now — and begins stumbling toward the bus.
“Smitty!” I shout. “Snap out of it!”
I bound back to the door to find Alice at the top of the steps, hand on the lever.
“I was waiting for you to come back,” she says guiltily. “I wouldn’t have shut them yet.” She peers out at Smitty, who is still running rings around the driver. “That’ll end in tears.”
I turn, hands on hips, ready to shout at Smitty again, when something causes all the breath to leave my body. Smitty slips on the snow and skids, right into the legs of the driver, who topples over on top of him.
“Smitty!” I scream, momentarily fixed to the spot, unable to move or to tear my eyes away from the pile of writhing limbs making deadly snow angels on the ground. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed the snowboard on the steps and I’m rushing toward the pileup.
Smitty’s head and body are completely obscured by the driver, but his legs stick out beyond the driver’s legs, kicking frantically as the driver tries to bite him. I raise the snowboard and smack it on the back of the driver’s head. It doesn’t even make him pause. Snowboards are not built to knock someone out. Right now, that is a major design flaw. I ram the end of the board into the driver’s side, trying to shove him off Smitty, who gets a hand free. I ram again, and Smitty pushes, and suddenly we’ve rolled him to one side for a second. Just long enough for me to remember the dangerous part of the snowboard and how it can be used. I lift the board up high above my head and with a superhuman surge of fear and desperation, bring the metal edge down on the driver’s exposed neck.
The driver stops moving, a look of dull surprise frozen on his face. Smitty scrambles to his feet, and the driver drops onto his back, the board still sticking halfway through his neck.
I crouch down, hands over my mouth.
“Awesome job, Roberta.” Smitty stands up and brushes himself down. “Although I totally had him.”
“My name’s not Roberta,” I whisper through my fingers, the cold of the snow seeping up from the seat of my leggings and into my core.
“Whatever you say.” Smitty hunkers down next to me and smiles, his eyes twinkling in a way that might have made my cheeks warm if I hadn’t been staring past him, at the thing, the thing that I killed. “Not bad going for a ski bunny.”
I almost feel the movement before I see it. The driver’s mouth opens, an arm shoots out, and fingers catch the edge of my jacket. I fling myself backward, a scream falling out of my mouth as I tumble into the snow, then quickly scramble up on my elbows, ready to kick, to claw, to fight . . .
In a single movement Smitty stands, raises his leg, and drops his big black boot down hard on the snowboard. There is a crack and a gurgle, and the driver’s head is liberated from his body.
“Oh my god, what did you do?” Alice is behind us.
“That was incredible!” Pete enthuses. “Best use for a snowboard I’ve seen all week!”
“Nobody is going to believe this when I post it!” Alice is holding a phone up. She’s been filming the whole thing.
I feel the sting of bile in the back of my throat as I tear my eyes away from the head. I half expect Smitty to pick it up by its hair, or kick it into the air and shout “Goal!” but surprisingly he stands somberly, almost in respect, gazing down at the driver and his head. Then the moment is gone.
He gently pulls me up, puts a strong arm around my shoulders, and together we walk toward the bus.
“We’re going to need a new board for the door.”
We leave the body in the snow. What else are we supposed to do?
Somehow Pete manages to drive the bus on fumes, out of the parking lot and down the road that leads past the gas station and to the café.
I feel empty. Should I be crying, or crazying it up? I killed the bus driver — or Smitty did. Or neither of us did, because he was already dead. This is way worse than Mr. Taylor. I killed a person I had been trying to heal a few hours before. I’ve heard of post-traumatic stress disorder — is that what I should be feeling? I sit, silent and strangely unafraid, as Pete teeters the bus down the hill, Smitty shouting directions, Alice watching for movement through the binoculars. I feel a catch in my throat, like some kind of weird, flipped-out pride. We’re still alive.
The bus creeps past the gas station at a respectful distance. The black smoke has almost gone. I glance at the ground for blackened bodies, but there are none. Maybe they disintegrated in the explosion?
Likewise, the spot in the road where Mr. Taylor lay has been covered by fresh snow. I think I see a lump, but I can’t be sure.
Good. It’s easier not to see.
By the time we reach the café, I can feel the blood running through my veins again. This is no time for wallowing, or crying, or imagining, or asking why. That time will come later. This is the time for pulling together every ounce of strength and reserve and hope. I clench my fists until the white bones of my knuckles show through the skin.
Pete draws the bus to a halt outside the Cheery Chomper.
“Last stop, everybody off!” he calls. He’s almost enjoying this. “End of the line.”
“Don’t even,” says Alice quietly, but we’re all ignoring him anyway.
The inside of the café is dimly lit — and there’s an erratic flickering, like a strobe light. I can’t see anyone, alive or dead or in-between.
The banner that was hanging above the entrance to the café has come undone at one end. It’s flapping gently in the wind, beckoning us in.
“I think we can safely assume that everyone who was in there is now gone,” Pete says. “Vaporized by Smitty at the garage, probably.” But he stays at the wheel, and the engine is still running.
“Yeah?” Smitty says. “How about you test out that theory?”
Pete turns off the engine, but stays put.
We all stay put.
“We’re not going to get anywhere chillin’ on the bus.” I try to convince myself, as much as anyone else. I peer into the café. There are Christmas lights twinkling by the counter. It’s January 9; they should have been taken down. Isn’t that bad luck? “We have to assume nobody’s coming,” I continue. “They would have come by now.”
“Where’s Gareth?” Alice asks suddenly. “If he was heading here with the laptop, how come we can’t see him?”
“He’s probably in another room, in the back,” says Smitty. “I am going to kick his arse when I see him.”
Alice turns, blinking. “And the arses of anything else hiding in the back, too?”
She has a point. Just because we can’t see jack doesn’t mean that Undead Jack and Undead Jill aren’t lurking in there with all of their friends, ready to Cheerily Chomp on us. But the fact remains, we have to do something.
OK, I’ve seen the movies. Believe me, I have shouted at my TV with the best of ’em. Don’t go in that haunted house, you losers! Don’t walk through that graveyard! Don’t check out that noise in the basement! Stay on the nice, safe bus and don’t go in the creepy café! I know, I know. We are relatively safe here. We’re mobile — up to a point. Ms. Fawcett has packed way too many sugary drinks than is wise for a group of teens. We have all of our limbs. There’s even a bathroom. We should just sit tight, right?
What you don’t realize until you’re right there in it, is the itch to keep moving. Maybe it’s hormones, or a death wish, or the lack of access to social networking sites, but jeez it’s hard being cooped up on a bus. And we’re curious. We’re hardwired to go into that café and face potential death, no matter how you slice it. It is on. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to build up the courage.
“I’m going in.” Smitty moves to the doors. Not too long, then.
I sling my own backpack over one shoulder, then arm us with skis, poles, boards — because hey, it worked last time — the door is opened, and we all troop out. Pete thoughtfully shuts the door after us. There is a fresh layer of snow on the café steps, but it is lumpy with the footprints of our Undead classmates, and we advance up to the door awkwardly, walking like the first men on the moon. We look through the glass. All clear. Smitty slowly opens the door . . . a little, then wider, then all the way.
As he steps in, there’s a loud beeb-beep, the modern equivalent of the shopkeeper’s tinkling bell above the door.
“Great.” Smitty stops as if he’s stepped on a land mine. “So much for the element of surprise.”
I step past him. Beeb-beep. Then Alice and Pete follow in quick succession. Beeb-beep. Beeb-beep.
“Friggin’ fantastic!” Smitty snarls. “Why don’t you play a sodding tune on the thing!”
“Sorry.” Alice isn’t, particularly.
“I thought it was the door,” I mutter.
Smitty points to the WELCOME beneath our feet. “Pressure mat.”
“Oh,” I mouth, as if I’m suddenly all about the quiet.
The door swings shut, Smitty holds up a hand, and we listen. There’s an irregular buzzing noise that matches the flickering lights. And a strong smell of burnt oil. I guess the cooks forgot to switch the fryer off before they turned all dead and dribbly. To our left are the tables, with plates of half-eaten food and packets of opened sandwiches. There are coats draped over chairs, abandoned, their occupants no longer needing their warmth.
Beyond the eating area is a diner-style ki
tchen with ovens and a grill. This is the source of the flickering light.
To the right is a small shop selling snacks and magazines, and ahead of us a corridor leading to bathrooms and who knows what else. We wait for something to happen. Nothing does.
“On three,” Smitty says. “One, two —”
“On three what?” Alice says.
He rolls his eyes. “We get off the mat. One, two, three.”
As one, we tiptoe off the mat. Beeb-beep. Again. We wait to see what we’ve disturbed. Nothing comes.
“If Gareth was here —” I begin.
“He would have popped his cowardly head out the door to say hi?” Smitty finishes. “Not necessarily.” He advances toward the dining area and kitchen, brandishing a snowboard. I follow, checking out the shop on the way.
The good — or bad — news is that there aren’t many places to hide. I check the corners. You always have to check the corners of the room — it’s like Danger Sitch 101. That’s where the bad guys lurk. There’s an old-school phone on the counter in the shop. I try it, but the line is dead. Not dead, exactly — I can hear a kind of static, like it’s plugged in but there’s no dial tone. I press the buttons a few times, and I hear them dialing down the line but connecting to nothing. It’s as if I’m already on a call and the person on the other end is listening, but not saying anything. Too eerie for words . . . I give up on it — disappointed and almost relieved in equal measure — and glance around the room for other options.
Leaving Alice and Pete standing back-to-back in the middle of the café as if tied to a stake, I make myself walk through the tables, gripping my ski pole as I peer around a half partition into the booths beyond. No one.
Smitty whistles at me and points to the counter at the open-plan kitchen, making some elaborate SWAT team hand signals. I think he just made them up, but it’s clear what he means. We need to check the kitchen. Looks clear enough, but it would be simply amateur not to check it. Smitty approaches from the aisle; I’m threading my way through tables. If something jumps out, he’s got a free run back to the exit while I’ll be hurdling bolted-down furniture. Great. We reach the counter, the fluorescent light fluttering on and off with a metallic ting. Smitty holds up a hand, three fingers held upright. OK, another countdown. The boy clearly likes his countdowns. Three, two, one . . .
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