Gravediggers

by Christopher Krovatin

  “Ms. Pilatón,” sighs Sarah Cardille, “please remind your guests that their interruptions do nothing to help their friend, and only serve to irritate the Council. They may think they are something more than mere citizens, but I assure you they’re not.”

  Keep it together, Kendra. Yes, this woman is obnoxious for no reason, and yes she and her cohorts seem unfeeling toward O’Dea’s current kidnapped state, but that’s no reason to have an episode and endanger your chances of ever helping find her.

  Really. It’s not.

  Suddenly, I am standing, my hands planted firmly on the table. “My name is Kendra Wright,” I say loudly. “With me are Ian Buckley and PJ Wilson. We are Gravediggers.”

  Why do I even try.

  “There are no Gravediggers,” snaps Anne Farrow.

  “And who has decided that?” I ask the three witches, doing my best to keep my voice from quivering, though it feels as though I am jamming my finger in an electrical outlet. “You? Your Council? From what I have learned from my friend Warden O’Dea Foree, my role as a Gravedigger is my destiny, which no curse or enchantment can deny. I have felt the power of karma drive me as I fought the breach in area forty-seven by convincing the living dead to tear one another apart. I felt it at area one-oh-two when I struck down hungry zombies in the humid jungle. But now, I must fight for my friend’s life. So Wardens, do me the favor of setting aside your reservations and allowing us to save one of your own.”

  Absolute silence. The three Wardens stare at me, mouths agape.

  “So what you’re telling me,” says Sarah Cardille slowly, her dark eyes meeting mine, “is that you took part in two undocumented breaches of containment?”

  My adrenaline rush turns sour and clammy. On my one side, Ian slaps a palm to his face; on the other, PJ exhales softly and whispers, “Ho boy.”

  “Well,” I say through partly numb lips, “given the circumstances—”

  “Enough,” says Cardille, slamming a palm down on the table with a resounding smack. Her smile radiates smug self-satisfaction—she must have been aware of these breaches if she knew who we are.

  Which means she played you, Kendra. She made you admit them publicly. Step up your game.

  “Let me make something clear to you three children,” continues Cardille. “Had this Council been informed of these breaches when they occurred, your friend Ms. Foree might not even be alive to be kidnapped. We have a time-honored policy of removing the heads of those who fail at their duties as Warden, depending on the extent of their infraction.”

  “She ain’t lying,” growls Blaze Creed. “We put it in a box, throw it in the river.”

  “Perhaps you are what you claim to be,” muses Cardille. “You’ve certainly brought enough catastrophe, suffering, and consternation to the Wardens you’ve met, just like Dario Savini’s father did some time ago. But we do not recognize Gravediggers. Not anymore. Your help is not needed, nor was it ever.”

  “But what about O’Dea?” says PJ, his eyes sparkling brightly. “Our friend is out there in the hands of a man who makes Bruce Campbell look like Shirley Temple. And she’s probably hurt. What can we do to help?”

  “Ms. Foree is trained in the ways of the Warden,” says Anne Farrow. “Given what information we have, we can only assume Savini has kidnapped her to help him break containment at area five.” The other two Wardens stare at their shoes at the last two words. “She will do whatever it takes to keep any secrets or talents she possesses from being used by our enemies.”

  “What does that mean?” says Ian, doing his best to ignore the horrible truth behind the woman’s words that sends my skin crawling. “Sorry, are you saying she’s going to kill herself? You’re going to let O’Dea commit suicide?”

  “It’s our way,” says Sarah Cardille matter-of-factly.

  Her calm leaves me reeling, my head swimming with anger and betrayal. These are the people meant to be protecting our friend’s life, and they’re happy to watch her kill herself as long as none of their precious secrets get out. The lack of human emotion it must take to be this kind of person astounds me.

  “You’re monsters,” says PJ, speaking my mind, his voice quiet but hard as steel. “Absolutely inhuman.”

  “Right on,” snarls Ian. Joy passes over me in a huge wave as I hear my friends give voice to my exact feelings. It is good to be in this as a team. “Josefina, you can’t be going along with this, right?”

  Our young Warden friend stares straight ahead, her face frozen in shock and horror. “I don’t . . . she is right, Ian. It is how Wardens have done things for a long time. If someone convinces a Warden to unlock the seals of cursed places all over the world, it could be disastrous. Death in the name of the balance, for the greater good.”

  “You’re kidding me,” says PJ.

  “Do not presume to judge her, young man,” says Sarah Cardille, her round face clenched in a porcine sneer. “Had you not troubled the balance of things by killing those cursed, none of this would’ve happened.”

  “At least we did something,” I say, leaning forward and looking into the old woman’s eyes, my mind a vengeful blur. “Maybe you’re right, maybe she would be all right had we not interfered. But without us, this countryside would be swarming with those things, and most of Puerto Rico might be overrun. I’d rather that than commit a pathetic sin of omission—”

  Sarah Cardille rises, her dress billowing out around her, and suddenly her eyes burn with a cold light that seems to freeze me from head to toe. At my side, I feel Ian’s hands shaking me and can barely hear Josefina crying out for the old Warden to stop, but there is nothing that can stop the electric tentacles of her power from digging into me, pushing down on me. Despite the overbearing pressure of her magic, some part of my mind recognizes what is happening, because O’Dea has done it to me before: the Evil Eye, the “oldest gag in the book,” a Warden’s most basic magic technique.

  Wait, Kendra. Concentrate. If you can remember that, then you’re not entirely under her control. Fight it. Concentrate your energy like PJ has been saying you need to. Feel her magic weighing on you, beating at your mind. Concentrate harder, Kendra. Force your own energy, your own neurons, to build a wall. Create a barrier to stop her power from spreading even further into you. Feel it? There.

  Wait. Hold on. Something’s not right. Something feels—

  Sharp pain bursts in the front of my skull, and without meaning to I cry out. Sarah Cardille goes flying backward with a gasp, stumbling past her chair and collapsing to the floor. Every Warden in the room looks suddenly pained—Anne Farrow bites her lip, clutching her heart; Blaze Creed stomps her foot and swears in French; even Josefina pinches the bridge of her nose.

  Dizziness overtakes me, and my feet stumble backward. Ian and PJ lower me into a chair just as Farrow and Creed help the Warden General to her shaky feet.

  “What the hell was that?” asks Creed, nodding toward me. “Does . . . does she have the blood? You, girl, who’s your mother?”

  “Get out,” snarls Sarah Cardille, blinking hard. “All of you. This meeting is over.”

  “Not a chance,” yells Ian. “I don’t know what Warden craziness just happened, but we want to help our friend. She’s out there.”

  Sarah Cardille snorts and shakes off the helping hands of her cohorts. “Fine,” she says. “You fancy yourselves Gravediggers? Very well. When we first investigated Savini’s father, Joseph, after he murdered a Warden, he had repeatedly documented a desire to unleash the horde of area five. It’s a city called Kudus. If our guesses are right, his son is heading there.”

  “And where’s that?” I ask through my buzzing teeth and light head.

  “That’s all you’re getting,” hisses Cardille. “You have seven days to retrieve your Warden. If you succeed, we will recognize you as Gravediggers. If you fail, Ms. Foree and Ms. Pilatón here lose their positions as Wardens and will be punished for their breaches with death.”

  Before I can scream protest, the three witche
s storm out the door, leaving me to clutch my aching head and moan, my friends’ terror palpable and heartbreaking.

  Chapter Three

  PJ

  Fear is, like everything I feel, a part of me.

  This is something I first learned on an island off of Puerto Rico while a girl named Josefina refused to help me fend off a hungry zombie and my best friend, Ian, was having a panic attack. Caught in the spur of the moment, I managed to channel my fear into something stronger, kind of an . . . emotional assault? That sounds about right. This terror allowed me to see what a sad creature the monster coming at me was, and I put it out of its misery. At the time, I had no clue what that meant, only that something cool happened and I killed a zombie, which, for a horror movie fan, is up there on the bucket list. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that power to change my world is also something I’ve always known, every time I looked through the eye of a camera and saw the world as a film. It’s the fear. It has always been a part of what I am.

  My whole life, I’ve been afraid of almost everything that could possibly hurt me or the people I care about—bugs, dander, cell phone radiation, you name it. Part of that was my mom, I guess, who’s always worried about my little sister, Kyra, and myself. Over the past couple of months, though, using the meditation technique Josefina taught me and the lessons O’Dea’s been giving us over the phone, I’ve been able to channel all my fear into the thing I love most: writing and making movies. Before, the camera was my escape, but now it’s my, I don’t know, my vent, my soapbox. Kendra would probably call it something like “an outlet for unhealthy impulses,” though that makes me sound like Michael Myers.

  But what I’m feeling now, as I trudge through school toward the doors and my bike, the cold October air pricking my ears, isn’t that kind of fear. The fear I normally get is kind of high-strung and sharp; it comes with a close-up shot and a violin shriek. This is despair, heavy and sick and sad. And try as I might, I can’t shake it. Maybe I’m being emotional, or not meditating hard enough. But . . .

  They’re doing nothing. O’Dea might kill herself, and they won’t do anything to help her. And O’Dea—how could she think about it? How could she take sides with a cosmic force that was this uncaring and cruel?

  As I walk, an orange streamer catches my eye, and I begin to take in all the trappings of the month around me: cutouts of grinning pumpkins and fanged bats, dangling rubber witches riding on broomsticks, jointed paper skeletons dancing on classroom doors. And then, of course, there’s the front office, which has a series of cutouts of walking corpses in rotting suits, made to look as though they’re pressing their gray undead hands against the glass, trying to get at us. From inside, Ms. Brandt glances up at me with her bright, ruddy complexion. She smiles and proudly points at the cutouts, wanting to make sure I see them. I give her what smile I have left. For a moment, I picture me bursting in while she and Ms. Geofferies, the school secretary, sip coffee, and giving her a history lesson. First of all, they’d come right through that glass. Second, they’re never in suits, they wear hiking gear or beachwear, whatever they died in. And trust me, they don’t just bare their teeth at you; they come growling with mouths open wide—

  Listen to me. Halloween, my holiday for cool makeup and scary movies on TV, and I can’t even enjoy it because of all the real monsters in my life.

  Ian waits by the bike rack, talking to Chuck Tompkins and Sean Cunningham, who somehow have gotten even bigger in seventh grade without getting any more intelligent. As I approach, I can hear Chuck describing a football game, but can immediately see that Ian doesn’t care; his eyes are wandering, his nods are slight and unenthusiastic. When he sees me, he waves a hand.

  “We’re shooting hoops this weekend,” says Sean as I reach them. “Coach told us to bring you. Wants to get you primed for this season.”

  Ian shrugs, glances at me. “Maybe. I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

  Sean frowns, nonplussed, and glances over to me. That’s never a good thing. “Hey, Wilson, where’s your camera? You don’t want to film this?”

  “It’s in my backpack,” I say, unlocking my bike, “and there’s nothing to film.” Anger, like fear, is a part of me, too, and needs to be properly dealt with. As O’Dea put it, One so easily leads to the other. Besides, if he thinks this is going to faze me, he has no idea what’s going on in my life.

  “You used to film everything,” he says, but I turn my back to him. “Fine, why don’t I take it and get some footage for you—”

  The minute his hand lands on my backpack strap, I close my eyes, let everything slow down, and focus my emotions on the necessary movements. One second, my hand is over my shoulder and my fingers are around his wrist. The next, I’ve spun to face him, twisting his arm in a painful direction.

  Sean yelps and yanks his arm away. After a second, his face turns red and he snaps, “You’re dead, kid.” Before he can reach me, Ian is between us, his reedy muscle a match for Cunningham’s girth.

  “Leave him alone, dude,” says Ian, glaring at his teammate. “You started it anyway.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Buckley.” When Ian doesn’t say anything and Sean realizes he’s not, he shakes his head and turns back toward school, Chuck following.

  “I’ll call you about shooting hoops,” says Ian.

  “Yeah, don’t bother,” chuckles Sean.

  As we mount our bikes and begin pedaling away from school, Ian seethes visibly, and I feel like a jerk. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I don’t mean to cause trouble.”

  “Oh, dude, no worries,” he laughs. “You were always right, that kid’s a real jackass. Remember years ago, when I was so worried about impressing that bozo?”

  “That was March, Ian,” I say. “Remember? Homeroom Earth?”

  Ian’s eyes stare off into the past, and he whistles. “Guess it was. Feels like years ago, though.” To that, I can only nod.

  Kendra’s mom’s house is a massive new-looking number with a huge front lawn, a three-car garage, and a single uncarved pumpkin sitting by the columns around the front door. Kendra’s bike stands carefully placed against one column, and we make sure to imitate her positioning. A few minutes after we ring the doorbell, her mother, Ms. Menendez, opens it wearing a suit that looks like it might cut you if touched the wrong way.

  “Gentlemen,” she says. “How has the new school year been treating you?”

  “I can’t believe our math teacher has never seen Pi,” I tell her.

  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream sucks,” says Ian.

  “Splendid,” says Ms. Menendez, opening the door wider. “Kendra and your friend Josefina are in her room. My daughter seems very excited about something, so please make sure she doesn’t hack into an FBI server.”

  Ian says, “No promises,” but I say nothing, my mind already wandering to Josefina. Maybe I can finally ask her about the dreams.

  We walk through the massive marble foyer, up the carpeted stairs, and down the heavenly white hallway. It’s like the set of Moon or something. The door to Kendra’s bedroom is locked, and when I knock, Josefina answers, shooting us that perfect grin. “Boys! Finally, you’re here.”

  “Is everything ready?” asks Ian, barreling across the room to where Kendra sits hunched over her desk. Josefina begins to turn back in, but I put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. Let Ian and Kendra talk a bit—especially with whatever’s going on with Ian about her. (Yeah, well, he might as well have it written on his forehead.)

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about—”

  “We should get ready,” says Josefina, darting away from me. My heart sinks. She’s been like this since we got here—avoiding me, refusing to make eye contact. When we last saw her, just as we were leaving the island, she told me she’d been having dreams with me in them. She called them visions and said I was in danger. The fact that she won’t talk to me makes me worry that I’m in bigger trouble than I think.

&n
bsp; Up on Kendra’s computer screen (which is larger than any I’ve ever seen) is the website for Melee Industries, mainly advertising their new game, Dead Paradise. The animated banner at the top of the page shows tourists in colorful Hawaiian shirts running from hordes of muddy, fearsome zombies.

  “Still couldn’t scrap the project,” snorts Ian.

  “This was not the project,” says Kendra sternly. “Turning Puerto Rico into a zombie farm was the project. This is the best possible alternative.”

  “What have you found out about Kudus?” I ask her.

  “Very little,” she says. “Two websites mention that it was an ancient city off South Asia, and there are a few books saying it was renowned for its architecture and woven goods. There’s not much else on it. One of them says it’s fictional, similar to Atlantis.”

  “Let’s hope our little psychopath buddy knows more,” says Ian. “So what’re we looking at? How do we get his attention?”

  “Since I figure we’ll get nowhere fast trying to email him, I downloaded this,” she says, tapping the screen. “It’s a modified aggregator that a friend on a computer science forum sent to me. It’ll just plug these fields into the Melee Industries search function one after another. Call me optimistic, but I think we can pique his interest.”

  My eyes scan down the list of fields—Isla Hambrienta, Isla Hambrienta zombies, Isla Hambrienta Kendra Wright, Wardens, Gravediggers, PJ Wilson, zombies, zombie spore, Dario Savini, to name a few—and clap a hand on her shoulder. “This is genius. Thank you for doing this.” Kendra doesn’t look at me, but smiles into her keyboard and shrugs. Part of the job.

  “And . . . here we go.” She presses the Enter key. We watch the Melee Industries website flicker through countless screens, most saying they don’t have any results and asking if we’ve spelled the words correctly. A silent minute in, I sigh, just a little heartbroken, and open my mouth to suggest we try something else—