Gravediggers

by Christopher Krovatin

  My fingertips run over the little rubber bumps on the ball, and I can really feel every single one of them as I charge down the court. All of the other players are dead as disco, green-skinned corpses with white eyes and black, chewing mouths, wearing ripped-up uniforms, who come at me with their hands straight out, the worst defense ever. My dad and O’Dea are in the stands, screaming at me to focus and work and give it my all, but then O’Dea’s face turns all swollen and bloody and my dad becomes Dario Savini, laughing at me. I go in for a layup, and then whoa, the whole court jerks sideways and I sit up.

  After a few seconds of blinking and shaking my head back and forth, my body tells me that the world is tilting, that everything is shaking. The dark metal tube of Danny Melee’s private jet lies before me, shuddering with turbulence.

  Slowly, the picture comes together—PJ across the row from me, asleep and wrapped in a blanket, the other seats lined up in front of us, each with enough legroom for an extra person to lie down in . . . and there, up at the front of the plane near the passage to the cockpit, a light. Once the shaking of the plane gets a little less intense, I unbuckle my seat belt and shuffle forward.

  “Can’t sleep?” says Kendra as I come up behind her. She’s in a little circle of seats with a polished wooden table in the middle of it, and it’s covered with old maps that are brown around the edges, big dusty-looking books, and computer printouts. Her laptop sits open by her side, glowing with even more information.

  “Yeah,” I say, taking a seat across from her. “Just a little shaken by everything that’s happened, I guess.”

  “That’s totally understandable,” she says, still not looking up from her research. “We’ve been thrust into this situation swiftly, unlike the mountain, or the island.”

  “You think it’s all going to be like this from now on?” I ask. “Just nonstop Gravedigger-ing, no warning whatsoever?”

  She finally stops reading, and looks up, not really at me but kind of past me, at what’s in her head. She blinks, and thinks. And it’s funny, ’cause that used to really get to me, when she did that. I’d just want to shake her and shout, “JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY, QUEEN BRAIN,” but these days it’s maybe the most incredible thing about her, how she can stop and take everything into account and think. How she does it is beyond me, but it’s so cool. She’s so cool, in her own weird, nerdy, psycho way.

  “I think we might be in the middle of something,” she says. “Meeting O’Dea, dealing with Dario Savini, these seem like pieces leading toward an end. At this time, I’m just following them.”

  Again, so smart. Makes so much sense. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  She shrugs and smiles. “That, I can’t tell you. I’m just the brains.”

  “Ah, you’re more than that,” I say. “I mean, you’re in our front line. You’re the bomb.” Yikes. Where’d that come from?

  Her cheeks turn a little darker, but the smile doesn’t move. “Thanks, Ian,” she says. “You’re also not all you appear to be.”

  Okay, time to hit the brakes. I’m in no way ready to deal with this right now. Gotta focus on something else. “So, what have you found out about this Kudus place?”

  “Well, it was a city in ancient Borneo,” she says. “According to the web transcripts I’ve found, it was a city in the twelfth century made up of artists, poets, and . . . the word here is sorcerers, but they probably mean philosophers. But that’s just one document I found online. This one”—she points at a mossy-looking scroll with a white computer printout paper clipped to it—“was written a century later and already describes it as a kind of underworld, full of demons and ghosts. The question is, what happened in between the writing of these documents.”

  “My guess is, something bad,” I say. “The kind of thing that can curse an entire city, make it a zombie town.”

  “Obviously,” she says. “Since it was made up of creative thinkers, it would be unsurprising if they were just overwhelmed by a local tribe. The Dayak headhunters had a prominent presence in that area at the time. What I’d like to know is, how’d it go from being a normal city to one only found”—she peers at a translation—“. . . through the dark holes in the earth, down in the depths of hell.”

  Good question—how do you sink a whole city? My eyes go over the old documents Kendra’s absorbing into her giant brain. One is a huge map of what could be Kudus, spread out across a brown flimsy scroll. Another is a page of weird squiggly characters surrounding a second, small map, this time with Kudus marked out in black and covered with a skull—obviously the second map of Kudus, the evil-place-beneath-the-earth one.

  “Is this a fence or what?” I ask. My finger outlines a border on the second map, the skull one. It’s a thick black border with these old-looking suns around it, the kind with faces—or it’s more like there are suns, and there are lines connecting them. Each sun has a symbol over it. “Why’s this map got this border and the other one doesn’t?”

  Kendra stares at the map, going totally still—and then bam, she’s flying into action. Her one hand goes rifling through all of her documents while the other starts typing furiously. An Indonesian/English dictionary comes flying out of nowhere. The sound of rustling papers and tapping keys reaches this crazy pitch and then stops all at once. Kendra, sits back, mouth open, dazed.

  “Ian, you continue to amaze me,” she says.

  “Well, yeah,” I say, having no idea what I just did.

  “I . . . I think they’re Wardens,” she says, pointing at the suns. “This symbol means pendeta—the word for ‘priestess.’ ” She rubs her chin thoughtfully. “I think the Wardens sunk the city. I think whatever happened here was bad enough that they used their magic to hide it away in the earth itself.”

  A shudder goes down my back at the thought of something so evil and terrifying to the Wardens that they had to jam it below the surface of the earth. But it’s not just that, it’s Kendra. All this talk of sorcerers and witch doctors gets me thinking about that meeting with the Wardens, when she blew that Goth Warden chick off her feet. That’s not normal. Kendra’s not normal. I mean, obviously she’s a Gravedigger, normal’s out the window, but she’s even not normal at that. It’s like the minute I got to know her, I found out she was nothing like what I thought; she was something stronger and crazier than I could be.

  “Well, okay, so why bring O’Dea there?” I ask her. “You think it’s like back on the island, that Dario Savini wants to release the zombies into the world and get back at the Wardens?”

  “Maybe,” she says. “My problem, though, is that he shouldn’t need her. We destroyed all the protective seals and special sigils on the mountain, and he destroyed the ones on the island. It didn’t take a Warden to do that.”

  Ugh. This sick feeling spreads deep in my guts just thinking it: “Maybe this is something new,” I say. “Something we’ve never dealt with before.”

  Kendra laughs a little. “I don’t know, Ian,” she says. “We’ve seen the dead walk. I suppose anything is possible. But if it is a foe we’ve yet to experience, what might it be?”

  My mind tries to come up with answers, but that only makes me feel sicker to my stomach, and suddenly I’m feeling worried about the whole thing—Kendra, O’Dea, my parents, this trip. “Well, good luck with the research,” I blurt, and stumble back to my chair.

  PJ shakes me awake and tells me we have about an hour before we land, and we all take turns changing clothes and taking showers (you heard me, man—Melee’s got a shower on his plane). Once we’re all ready to go, a flight attendant feeds us breakfast, and then we bump and shake our way through a mass of gray wet clouds onto a private airfield on the Indonesian half of Borneo. One by one, we shrug on our backpacks, huge black canvas numbers loaded down with caving gear—cords and carabineers and harnesses—and covered with buckles and straps. Mine goes on easy, but PJ nearly falls over—the thing’s almost bigger than he is—and Kendra and I have to steady him as he gets geared up.


  “Some Gravedigger, huh?” he laughs as he tightens his straps.

  “As long as you kill zombies, I don’t care if you wear your shoes on the wrong feet,” I say, and get a laugh from him and Kendra.

  It feels good, hearing them laugh. Something tells me it’s going to be the last time I hear it for a while.

  Whatever I expected, it wasn’t anything like this. Part of me thought it was going to be all dusty and sunny, with long snakelike dragons and roofs with spiked shoulders, if that makes any sense. Like Japan in one of those samurai movies PJ made me watch.

  Instead, the whole place is damp, and the gray sky stretches on over the airfield and over the bright green trees just past it. As we leave the jet and walk along the wet tarmac, planes and towers and fences on one side and swaying green trees on the other, all with this rumbling storm overhead, I begin to wonder how real any of this could be. Even with the sleep I got, I can feel the time difference already messing with my head, and the dark rings under Kendra’s and PJ’s eyes tell me the same.

  An Indonesian man in a suit shakes our hands as we arrive, calling himself Mr. Kusama, an employee of Melee Industries Indonesia. Once we’re all checked in and our passports have been reviewed (someone must have called ahead, because we get brushed by without so much as a second look), we’re shown to a car waiting for us. For the record, it feels really dumb to take off your ultra-cool caving gear after getting all suited up and strapped in.

  “All right, friends,” says Mr. Kusama through a heavy accent as we leave the airfield. “Straight to the Bangyan Caves, correct?”

  “That’s correct,” says Kendra. “We’re heading there to take part in a new tour that’s going on—”

  “I have been instructed where to take you and how long to wait,” says Mr. Kusama, “but also not to ask about or listen to any other information about your trip. So, please: Bangyan Caves, correct?”

  “Yup,” says PJ.

  “Splendid,” he says.

  As we drive, a city—Kendra says a name I can’t in any way reproduce, “Ban-yar-museen”—passes in the distance and I watch its skyline roll by, surrounded by waving trees and scummy clouds. Everything about this place, even the city out my window, feels new and crazy, like none of it fits right and I don’t belong here. Maybe it’s the jet lag and the rain getting me down, but it’s like everything’s happening too fast, like we’re running headfirst into a totally nut-bar situation where people’s lives are on the line, and are supposed to accept it. And I think about my dad. I feel lousy about lying to him, and if I hadn’t, I’d still be at home.

  It’s too much. All I ever wanted to do was play basketball and chase deer.

  Chapter Five

  Kendra

  Obviously, our current situation is dire. With that said, I cannot help but think of how lucky we are to get opportunities like this.

  Indonesia is as we speak transitioning from its dry season to its rainy season, which lasts throughout the winter, resulting in a sky dark with a massive gray Cumulus Arcus cloud. Out my window, the skyline of Banjarmasin shines over the thick green canopy of trees, looking both old world and ultramodern simultaneously. Part of me wants to tell our driver to get off at the next exit, take us through the busy streets, get us bowls of the local cuisine (I’m almost positive it’s a tripe dish here—cooked intestines—but given what I’ve seen as a Gravedigger, I think I could handle it), and maybe escort us to the nearest Buddhist temple, where we could pray to the powers that be for good karma on this upcoming mission.

  There’s no time, Kendra. This isn’t a research trip. You are not here to learn, or teach, or discover. A man has kidnapped your friend and may feed her to monsters. It might be your job to kill him.

  As I think it, a shudder runs down my spine, and I watch Ian staring out his window, PJ with his eyes closed and his breaths measured. No one has mentioned this yet. If I had to guess, I’d posit that none of us are prepared to confront it. So far, being a Gravedigger has entailed murdering monsters, returning the dead to their appropriate state. All of O’Dea’s long-distance teachings made sense in the context of battling zombies. But if Dario Savini is threatening to harm our friend or release a horde of the undead, our options may be limited. We may have to be assassins on this trip. A heartbeat will stop. I am unsure if we can handle that.

  “What’s the game plan once we get to the cave?” asks PJ.

  “That’s where Danny’s research ends,” I answer. “There are apparently caves over the city that may be able to lead to it, but no one seems to know how one goes from the former to the latter.”

  “Are you kidding me?” says Ian, looking amazed. “We’re just going to these caves and hoping we’ll find an entrance into Kudus?”

  “We may have to do some searching,” I say with a shrug. “We’ll have to keep an eye out for signs of Savini or O’Dea having been there. If we don’t see an entrance quickly, we may have to split off from the tour group and explore some less-traveled corners of this place.”

  “We’ll find it,” says PJ, eyes closed, voice almost sad. He sounds so sure, but in a grave and fatalistic way (appropriate for our trip, and a helpful distraction—one).

  PJ, what is going on in your head? What am I missing?

  “Let’s hope,” grumbles Ian. He raises a hand and starts writing “Kudus” in the steam on the window with his fingers, his brow furrowed.

  This won’t do, Kendra. You need your troops rallied. PJ may be in his quiet meditative head, but Ian can’t afford to be petulant. For an adventure like this, our physical center is vital.

  “You’ll probably have to run the Eddie Haskell routine when we arrive, Ian.” PJ’s name for it, not my own. “Sorry to impose, but they fall for it every time.”

  He smirks a little. “Yeah, they do,” he says, and finally looks at me. “No problem, I’ve got it covered.” Something about the way he looks at me makes my cheeks go warm. It’s as though someone wiped a layer of grime off Ian, and suddenly I am seeing a glow coming from inside him.

  Listen to yourself, Kendra. This is Ian Buckley. Ian Buckley who once called you a pathetic loser in class. Ian Buckley, who got you all mixed up in this zombie business to begin with. You must be jet-lagged.

  With the city long gone, the highway turns into a rural country road. An hour later, we see our first billboard, depicting a towering cave surrounded by brightly colored Indonesian characters. We turn off at an exit and head down an unpaved road, the car shuddering, a stretch of hills growing in the distance. Finally, we see another series of signs depicting stalactites and bats, followed by a metal fence that a man opens for us, ushering us toward a sizeable cave mouth with a small white shack next to it.

  As we pile out of the car, Ian turns up his smile and ruffles his blond hair. Sometime in the last few months, PJ and I decided that Ian had to be the face of our Gravedigger unit. While he occasionally overspeaks and will often straddle the line between crass and unmentionable, Ian Buckley is a blond athletic young man with an upbeat attitude, and people seem to respond to that well. When information is needed, I’ll dart in. PJ is, in his own words, “permanent background.” Ian’s our best face forward.

  As we approach the shack, we see a small crowd of tourists waiting nearby, wearing ponchos and sorting cameras. Tuning in my ears, I acknowledge three Germans, four Indonesians, and a Chinese couple speaking Mandarin. As we step up to the shack, a box office window greets us, where a teenage girl mans a battered cash register.

  “Hiya!” says Ian, putting his biggest, dumbest smile forward.

  “Apakah anda memiliki reservasi?” she asks.

  His shoulders slump as quickly as his grin does, and he looks at me in sudden terror. I myself feel naked and embarrassed in my ignorance.

  Didn’t study your phrasebook enough this time, Kendra. Didn’t think you’d need to. That’s some sloppy work. Did you expect Ian or PJ to know Indonesian—

  “We should have a reservation under ‘Melee,’ ” says
PJ, lightly pushing Ian aside. “Tickets for three.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” says the girl. “They’re right here.” She slides three tickets through a slot in the bottom of the glass. “Everyone who works here speaks English, so feel free to ask questions.”

  “How did you know that?” I ask PJ as we make our way toward the cave mouth.

  “Look at this place,” says PJ. “It’s a total tourist trap. Of course they speak English.”

  PJ is not wrong. The cave entrance, an egg-shaped stone mouth opening up in the side of a nearby hill, is surrounded by signs, trash cans, and even a battered vending machine. There appear to be no shrines or ancient carvings, only a series of damp-looking tourists and an uninterested tour guide in an orange jumpsuit and a helmet lamp. When we reach him, he’s speedily talking to the Germans and hands us each a helmet lamp without looking at us.

  When he finishes his announcement in German, he turns to us and rattles out: “Welcome to Bangyan Cave. Bangyan Cave is one of the largest caves in Indonesia and has a diversity of wildlife, there are also many rare geological formations, some even say the water from Bangyan is medicinal, Bangyan Cave was said to be formed over a thousand years ago, artifacts and fossils found in Bangyan Cave have been dated back for as long as twelve hundred years, more information can be found at our visitors’ center, ready to go?” I can’t help but blink, trying to digest the blast of information just fired at me, but our tour guide doesn’t even wait for an answer, merely turns and begins leading us into the cave. One by one, we and the rest of our tour group snap on our lamps as the shadows close in.

  A distinctly spooky ambience seems to settle over us as we enter the cave. The air is cool with darkness, and dusty and mildewed in my mouth and nostrils. Every sound seems cacophonous (one of the first self-quizzed vocab words), echoing along every surface. Our guide leads us through a narrow tunnel, the smooth gray stone walls descending around us until we walk in single file and our shoulders occasionally brush the walls. For some time, we amble forward in this way, glowing silhouettes in the light of the lamps. Soon, I feel an involuntary pang of claustrophobia, and I hope we’re not just squeezing our way farther and farther into a stone coffin. My head goes a little light, and my hand reaches out to steady myself against the wall.