by Ty Drago
I turned and looked at them both. My two best friends.
“And after that,” I said. “We're gonna waste that sack of bugs.”
Helene and the Burgermeister swapped glances.
Then, in perfect, twin-like unison, they replied, “We're in.”
Part Two: The Maggots
“Come on, Will,” Helene urged, pulling my arm toward the fire escape ladder. “We gotta go.”
But I just wasn’t able to take my eyes off the two dead boys.
“You can't help 'em, dude,” the Burgermeister told me, landing a supportive hand on my shoulder that almost knocked me over.
“Yeah, I can,” I heard myself whisper. “I can help them by nailing Steiger.”
“Not from the backseat of a police car you can't,” Helene pointed out. “And that’s where we’ll all be, if the cops catch us up here.”
As usual, she was right.
We left Michael and Robert where they'd fallen. As we did, I told myself that, with all these cops and firemen around, somebody would find them. Somebody would figure out who they were. Somebody would tell their father that his sons were —
Oh yeah, I was seriously pissed!
Sirens were wailing by the time we reached the alley floor. Red and blue lights splashed our shadows crazily against the brick walls as we hurried toward 13th Street. There were a lot of people out and about, lured from their homes by the noise and activity. Cities are like that; even at 2:00 a.m., a good story’s always worth missing some zzz's.
For some reason, that notion made me even madder.
As we headed up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, I spotted maybe a dozen Corpses mixed in with the spectators, mostly Types Two and Threes. The Twos had gray and purple skin, visible from beneath the hospital scrubs or lab coats they wore. They looked greasy in the light from the streetlamps. The Threes, on the other hand, were bloated with trapped gas, resembling over-inflated balloons. Even their eyes seemed larger than normal, swollen and weirdly sightless inside heads that were grotesquely round and wrinkle-free.
The deaders had blended in with the crowd of normal men and women, who were as blind to the danger in their midst as the sheep in that story — you know, the one where the wolf wraps himself in a sheep skin so he can move through the herd unseen.
Once again, Dave's big hand landed on my shoulder. “Take it easy, dude,” he whispered. “Now's not the time.”
It wasn't until that moment that I realized I'd been standing still on the sidewalk, watching the deaders watch the fire — and that my hands had balled up into fists.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Right.”
I followed my friends to the end of the block and around the corner, putting the fire and its spectators, both living and dead, behind us.
“Okay,” the Burgermeister said once we'd settled ourselves beneath the awning of a closed deli. “What's next?”
“I told you!” I snapped. “We're gonna find where Steiger's got the rest of those Seers that Michael and Robert told us about! Then we're gonna get them out and kill that wormbag!”
“Nice recap,” Helene remarked sourly. “Now how about answering Dave's question?”
I sighed. “Sorry. I ... can't get the image of those kids dying like that outta my head.”
“Me, neither,” Helene admitted. “But right now we don't need anger. We need a plan.”
“Will's got a plan,” the Burgermeister said. And the absolute, unwavering confidence that I heard in his voice made me smile, even as it scared the crap out of me.
“Yeah,” I said, blowing out another sigh. “Maybe I do.”
Then I told them what it was.
Here's the thing about Corpses: They're not zombies. I know; I've harped on that before — but in this case I mean it a little differently. Corpses are smart. In fact, they're smart enough to sometimes be lazy. And lazy people, even lazy dead people, don't walk when they can ride. There were a lot of them on these streets tonight, and all had come from the same hidden location. Since Michael and Robert had escaped on foot, most of the deaders chasing them had been on foot as well. But now that the boys were dead, Steiger had probably called his hunters back to their HQ.
And, to speed things up, I figured he might just send a vehicle to collect them. You know — to save time. Standing on the corner of Spring Garden and 13th Streets, the three of us monitored the goings on down the block, where city firefighters had gotten the blaze I'd started under control. The crowd of neighborhood onlookers seemed thicker now, with even more of them being of the dead variety. And with so many of Steiger's Corpses gathered together in one place, I was betting it wouldn't be long before their ride showed up.
It was a bet I won.
Though I admit I hadn't expected a school bus.
We heard it before we saw it — a huge, lumbering rust bucket with the words “School District of Philadelphia” stenciled across its yellow hide in faded black letters. It rumbled up Spring Garden Street, heading west, and turned onto 13th, coming within a few yards of the shadowed awning under which we hid. There it braked at the opposite curb, closer to us than to the mob of deaders who were to be its passengers — far enough from the action that the cops would probably ignore it, but near enough for Steiger's “people” to spot their transport.
“Who's still got a Ritter?” I asked.
“Not me,” Helene replied. “Used mine back in the funeral parlor.”
Another story.
“And I used mine on that dead nurse back when we first found the twins,” I said. “Dave?”
With a grin, the huge kid pulled a big syringe out if his inside coat pocket.
“Good,” I said. “Now ... don't use it. Not on the driver. We need him to be able to talk. That means no neck or spine breaking, either. Got it?”
“Got it,” he replied.
“Better hurry,” Helene said. “Those medical deaders are heading for the bus.”
So we hurried, crossing 13th Street as quickly as we could.
The bus idled at the curb, its old engine rumbling. As we slipped around behind it, careful to stay clear of its many windows, we noticed that the doors, the folding kind that only buses seem to have, stood closed. Pressing myself against the grubby yellow paint — with Helene and Dave huddled close behind me — I reached over and rapped my knuckles on the door glass.
Like I said, Corpses are smart. And smart people are sometimes careless. I'd just given the driver exactly what he'd been expecting: a knock on the bus door. So he reacted automatically. He didn't pause to wonder why he couldn't see anyone standing there. He didn't say to himself, “Maybe I ought to make sure that knock is my dead pals and not a few Undertakers, led by a one pissed-off Will Ritter, planning to do me some serious hurt.” Heck, he probably didn't even bother to glance over. He just pulled the lever that opened the door.
And in we went, charging up the narrow steps single-file.
The driver was a Type Five. I mean a hardcore Type Five —at least two months dead. His body resembled a sack of dried sticks wrapped in gray parchment. His eyes were so sunken that they hardly seemed to be there at all, though when they met mine, it was crystal clear that he saw me just fine.
“Undertaker,” he growled.
“Dead guy,” I said.
He attacked me, lurching off the driver's sat with all the gusto of a Type One or Two, but none of the power. I readied my Taser, but then hesitated — suddenly worried that slamming that much electricity through such a dried-up husk would burn him to ash. It's hard to interrogate a pile of ash.
So at the last instant, I stepped aside and let him stagger past me —
— right into the Burgermeister's arms.
There was a crunch, like the sound of jumping into a big pile of fall leaves, and Dead School Bus Driver snapped in half at the waist.
His lower half kept going, the legs pumping spasmodically. They reached the narrow stairs just as Helene came up them. With a disgusted cry, she reflexive
ly kicked the broken torso. It slammed against the glass partition on her left and literally fell apart, the pieces tumbling down around her feet like a rain of twigs.
Meanwhile, Dave still held the top half in his arms. The boy’s expression was so completely shocked that it might have been funny in other circumstances. He looked in the deader's face. And the deader looked back at him.
“Undertaker,” the Type Five hissed again. “You die!”
Then he clamped two withered hands around the Burgermeister's 20–inch neck.
Dave made a sound halfway between a “yuck” and an “ugh.” Then he shook the Corpse in his huge arms and, with another sickening crunch, Dead School Bus Driver's head popped and landed in the aisle at my feet.
“Dave!” I snapped.
“Oh, crap!” the Burgermeister groaned. “I broke him!”
“I know!”
“Um ... guys?” Helene said.
Dave dropped what was left of the Corpse, which wasn't much. The dude wasn't dead, of course, just trapped inside one or more of the pieces. Normally, this was a good thing — except we desperately needed the answers that, in this condition, he couldn't provide.
“Sorry, Will,” said the Burgermeister, looking sheepish. “I ... guess I didn't figure on him being that ... breakable.”
“Guys?” Helene said again.
“What?” I growled at her. What can I say? It had been a bad night.
She pointed over my shoulder.
I turned and immediately saw two things. The first was a mob of Corpses approaching, moving in and out of the circles of light cast by street lamps. Their dead faces, in various states of decomposition, were gradually becoming visible through the glass of the rear emergency exit. So far, they hadn't seen us.
But we had less than minute before they would.
The second thing I saw was the female Type Two who sat on one of benches at the back the bus. As our eyes locked, she stood and stepped into the aisle. She wore a nurse's uniform, one of the old-fashioned kind — you know, a white dress, belted at the waist and one of those funny little half-moon-shaped cloth caps on her head. In her dead hands, she held a clipboard. Maybe her job was to make sure that all of Steiger's people got onto the bus, ticking them off a printed list as they boarded. How many school field trips had I been on where they'd done that?
“You children,” she said in a thick, kind of slimy voice. Rotting vocal chords. “I don't believe you belong on this bus.”
The words sounded harmless enough, but their tone was steeped in sarcasm. I didn't know why she hadn't immediately attacked us, why she'd watched the bus driver get — well — dismembered. Perhaps it was a class thing. Corpses had leaders and warriors. And the leaders loved bragging about how they were better, smarter, and stronger than the warriors.
Maybe Dead School Bus Driver had been a warrior, and a pretty useless one at that.
Maybe Dead Nurse With Clipboard was a leader, and had enjoyed watching him get trounced.
“Dave,” I said, without taking my eyes off the Type Two in the aisle.
“Yeah, Will?
“Drive.”
Then, as he climbed onto the driver's seat and started fiddling with the clutch and gearshift, I raised my Taser and said to Dead Nurse With Clipboard, “We've got some questions for you.”
“Do you?” She smiled. I hate it when they smile. “Unfortunately, I'm on a tight schedule. Dr. Steiger was very specific about getting the searchers back to the Institute as quickly as possible ... now that the escaped subjects have been ... dealt with.”
“Dealt with ...” I echoed. In my mind's eye, I saw two scared boys falling dead at the push of Steiger's button.
Then it was as if this image was veiled in red.
Somewhere behind me, I heard Helene warn, “Will ...”
I ignored her and moved forward. I didn't charge. Mad as I was, I wasn't crazy. Corpses could move fast when they wanted to, and recklessly attacking one was a great way to get killed. So I came at her slowly, watching her dead eyes for the slightest hint of her intent.
Whatever she did, I felt ready. I'd fought so many of these monsters that I didn't think they had any tricks left that I hadn't seen before.
Wrong.
Dead Nurse lowered her clipboard and, reaching one gray-fingered hand into a deep pocket of her uniform dress, pulled out what looked like a mayonnaise jar.
At that instant, manning the steering wheel, Dave turned a corner — hard.
I was thrown to the right, my hip slamming into one of the molded plastic seats hard enough to nearly knock me down. Somewhere behind me, Helene yelled some words her mother probably wouldn't have approved of. At the same time, Dead Bus Driver's head bounced past me, rolling down the center aisle toward Dead Nurse With Clipboard — well, Dead Nurse With Mayonnaise Jar now, I guess — who'd somehow managed to brace herself and stay on her feet.
“Jeez, Dave!” Helene cried. “Take it easy!”
“Can't!” our big driver yelled back. “They're chasin' us!”
And, as I straightened and looked out the rear windows, I saw that he was right. While the nurse and I had been swapping words, the Corpses on the street had wised up and come at a run. If the Burgermeister hadn't done his thing, they'd have been all over this bus by now.
“Oh ...” Helene remarked, seeing what I saw. “Nice move.”
“Tell me something I don't know!” Dave snapped.
I readied my Taser and advanced, moving unsteadily along the center aisle toward Dead Nurse With Mayonnaise Jar.
“I was going to use this on that fool there,” she remarked. If my approach worried her in the slightest, it didn't show. Instead, she nodded at the bus driver's head, which lolled on the rubber mat between us. “Dr. Steiger's been wanting to rid us of him for a while. So when he sent us both on this errand, he gave me this ...” She held up the jar. “… he told me to make an example of him, once the bus was full. That’s all spoiled now.” She treated me to a withering look.
“Stuff happens,” I replied, coming closer.
What's in that jar? And why does it look like it's ... moving?
“Very true, Undertaker. So I suppose I’ll have to find another use for it.” Her gray, dead face split into a hideous grin. Then she raised the jar high over her hand and threw it.
“Watch out!” Helene screamed.
I ducked, but I needn't have bothered. Dead Nurse hadn't been aiming at my head but at the floor at my feet. As it happened, though, the bus hit a pot hole, which caused her to stagger and flub her throw. Good thing too. If that jar had landed where she'd wanted it to land —
Well, let's just say you wouldn't be reading this right now.
The glass jar didn't explode; there was too much stuff inside it for that. Instead, it just broke into three pieces, and the stuff sort of tumbled out. Only it wasn't stuff. It was a whole lot of little stuffs.
I heard Helene gasp.
I felt my stomach roll over.
Maggots.
But these were the biggest maggots I'd ever seen! Your typical fly larva is maybe the size of a grain of rice; believe me, I've seen enough of them to know. These were more like earthworms, three or four inches long, each with a segmented white body, tiny eyes, a weird kind of puckered mouth, and a half-dozen stumpy feet on one end to let it drag itself around.
For a long moment, the three of us — Helene, Dead Nurse and me — all stared at the squirming pile of larvae that writhed in the middle of the aisle.
Somewhere behind me, Dave yelled, “What's going on?”
“You don't want to know,” Helene replied.
Dead Nurse grinned. “Now you die, Undertaker.”
The maggots moved. Jeez, did they move! Way faster than I’d expected. Way faster than maggots had any business moving.
Except they didn't come at me.
They went for Dead Bus Driver's head.
Pouncing on it, the swarm went to work — munching and chopping — except much quicke
r and more savagely that your typical rice-sized baby bugs.
Dead Nurse's grin flipped over. “They were supposed to eat you,” she said, sounding as unhappy as a kid who get socks for Christmas.
“What are they?” I demanded.
She didn’t answer. Her dead eyes remained fixed on the squirming things, her dead expression filled with disappointment.
Between us, completely buried under a mass of white bodies, Dead Bus Driver's head was consumed — I mean totally and completely gone, in seconds.
The maggots abandoned the polished skull and started rolling and tumbling over one another in the aisle, as if unsure of what to do next.
“Unlike normal maggots, they're supposed to favor living flesh over dead,” Dead Nurse complained. “Yet they chose that fool's host over you. I'll have to tell Dr. Steiger the field test was less than successful.”
Then she pulled a small silver tube from around her neck.
“What's that?” Helene demanded.
“A dog whistle,” the Corpse replied absently, looking so crest-fallen that I almost felt sorry for her. She put the silver tube between her blackened, rotting lips. She clearly meant to blow it, which was weird on the face of it, since the dead don't breathe, right?
Except, that's not quite right. They don't have to breathe. But they can if they want or need to — like when they've got a whistle that needs, well, whistling. And, while I had no idea what would happen when she did, I knew full well that I didn't want to find out.
So, running on pure instinct, I ran up and kicked the pile of maggots.
There was a lot behind that kick — all the anger and outrage I felt over Michael and Robert's murder, all my terror and desperation about the other kids that Steiger still had in his “pen.” I didn't manage to nail all of the creepy things with that kick, but I got most of them. They flew pretty far too. And for once, my aim was dead on. Pun intended.
A whole bunch hit the Corpse in the face.
