by Jeff Strand
“There it is,” I said.
Adam parked on the side of the street right next to it and shut off the engine. “I was going to try to lighten the mood by making a joke about how you owe me a fare,” he said, “but then I thought, no, that’s weak.”
“It might have been funny.”
“Should I do it now?”
“No.”
We got out of the taxi and began the process of removing the manhole cover again, this time with a lot more urgency. At one point, we lost our grip on it, and it clanked down onto where two of my toes would have been, so in the end, everything, including bodily mutilation, happens for a reason.
“Do you see him?” I asked, peering down into the semi darkness.
“No,” said Kelley.
We all listened closely for any zombie-esque sounds but heard nothing.
“I’ll go,” said Adam. “I’ll find where he is, and then you guys can come down and help me bring him up.”
“Are you supposed to be doing things like that?”
“I’m the only one who isn’t hurt. Except for the marks on my chest, but those itch more than anything. It doesn’t make sense for anybody else to go. I may be more important to the future than you two, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you take all the risks.”
He climbed down the ladder and disappeared from sight.
Then he screamed.
Then there was silence.
“Uh, Adam?” I called down.
Nothing.
Kelley and I looked at each other.
“Adam?” Kelley called down. “Are you okay?”
Still nothing.
“Okay, well, I guess we don’t get to sit this one out,” said Kelley.
“I’ll go,” I said. “I’m more used to my foot than you are your leg.”
There was so much to be said, but I’d pretty much said it all that other time when I thought I might be headed toward certain death. I had no time to waste. I climbed down the ladder, walked forward several feet, and saw Adam’s body.
I don’t mean his dead body. I apologize for startling you if that’s what you thought. He was lying on the ground (not in raw sewage or anything like that; it smelled nasty down here, but it was more of a rock tunnel than a river of poo).
Mr. Click was on top of him, hands sort of flopping around as if he was trying to get them around Adam’s neck.
I hurried over there and shoved Mr. Click off of him. I quickly grabbed Adam’s arms and dragged him back toward the ladder as Mr. Click scooted toward us, moving with surprising haste for somebody with no working arms and only one leg.
“Get back!” I said, kicking him in the face as hard as I could.
Mr. Click rolled onto his side and pulled himself into the fetal position. Adam coughed and rubbed his throat, even though he hadn’t actually been strangled.
“How the hell did he get you?” I asked.
“I dunno. I guess I tripped over him.”
Sometimes no rude comment can suffice, so I returned my attention to Mr. Click.
He looked sad.
Scared.
Like a wounded puppy.
“Mr. Click?”
He flinched at the sound of my voice.
“Mr. Click, I’m sorry I kicked you like that, but you sort of tried to strangle Adam, right?”
Why was I talking to him? I had a tight time frame to avoid lakes of fire!
He just looked so.sad.
“Don’t go getting all sympathetic,” I told him. “You were a creep. You made my life miserable. You falsely accused me of cheating.” Mr. Click’s eyes had gone all teary.
“We never meant for this to happen. We just wanted your leg to hurt. I’m so sorry about what we did. It was an accident. Well, no, not an accident. It was on purpose, but we didn’t think it would have anywhere near that much impact.”
Mr. Click’s mouth opened, as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t. He was probably trying to assign us more homework. “He looks sad,” said Adam.
“I know he looks sad! What do you want me to do about that? I can’t help it if he looks sad!”
Maybe Mr. Click wasn’t such a bad teacher. Maybe everything he did was to encourage his students to achieve greatness. What if he’d gone home every night, sipped a cup of tea, and chuckled about how he was keeping those crazy kids on their toes? “Someday,” he’d say, a warm smile on his face, “those kids will have jobs that they love and true inner happiness, and I’ll have helped them, if only a little.”
Or maybe he was an evil jerk.
Either way, my heart broke for this sorrowful, frightened, pathetic creature squirming around on the ground, even if he had just tried to strangle Adam.
“Maybe he wasn’t such a bad teacher,” said Adam. “He sort of inspired me to do better. I didn’t do better, but there were lots of times where I thought I should. Maybe this was just his teaching style. When the gypsy lady mentioned Chef Ramsay, that made me think about all of those reality shows where the host is really mean to the contestants, but he’s really just trying to make them be the best they can possibly be. And yeah, also to boost ratings, but I don’t think Mr. Click would’ve cared about TV ratings. He was above that sort of thing.”
“Can we get him out of here now?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
Kelley slowly came down the ladder, wincing with each step. “Ow,” she said. “Ow,” she said again. “Ow,” she said once more. But it was a brave, strong “ow,” not a whiny “ow.” My admiration for my girlfriend knew no bounds. If it weren’t for the fact that this relationship was always going to be a she-dumps-me-and- not-the-other-way-around type of deal, I would have known at that moment that I would never break up with her.
“Oh, good, he’s right there,” said Kelley. “Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awful that his arms are broken and his leg is gone, but it does make him easy to keep track of.”
“That’s really morbid,” I said. “But accurate.”
Then Kelley looked the way she did when we went to see kittens at the humane society. “Oh, look at him. He looks so sad. I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but I never thought he was all that mean.”
“He was horrible!” I insisted.
“He was good at what he did. Maybe public speaking wasn’t really his thing, but he knew the information, and he could always answer questions, and I think he truly cared about each and every one of us.”
“He hated us!”
“He hated it when we didn’t apply ourselves. He hated it when we didn’t strive for excellence. He hated when he didn’t think we were being good citizens. But to him, there was no teacher’s pet. We were all his pets.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I’ve never seen such sad, soulful eyes.”
“I know,” said Adam. “They’re haunting.”
“He was the best teacher we’ve ever had. No other teacher cared as much. After we get out of here, I’m going to start raising money for the Mr. Click Memorial Library. I think he’d like that.”
“Or maybe you could put a bunch of books he liked on an e-reader,” Adam suggested.
“That works too. But we have to do something to honor him.” “I miss him,” said Adam. “Even though he’s right there, I miss him. When you stop and think about it, who is the real monster: the mean history teacher or the kids who turned him into a broken zombie? It’s gonna be hard for me to face the mirror for a while.”
“Can we please get him up the ladder before I burn in hell?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Adam. “Sorry.”
“Well, well, well,” said a familiar voice. It was not Kelley, and it was not Adam, and it was not Mr. Click. It also wasn’t Zeke,
Mildred, Glenn, Franklin, Donna, or Donnie. (Donnie was that guy from the beginning who cheated off my test, whom I confronted at his locker but he wouldn’t admit it.)
It was Ribeye.
He was pointing a gun at me.
“Man, I’ve been walking around these tunnels forever. I didn’t expect to find you again.”
“Shouldn’t you have just gone up the ladder to the junkyard?” I asked. “That’s where I left you.”
“I would have done that, except I wandered around in a daze for a while. You busted my head up pretty good. I haven’t forgotten that.”
“Your gun’s empty,” I said.
Ribeye shook his head. “I had an extra clip in my pocket.” “Prove it—no, no, don’t prove it. What do you want?” “What do you think I want?”
“Peace for all?”
“Not quite.” He looked down at Mr. Click. “You really messed this dude up. What’d he do to you?”
“Nothing. It never should have happened.”
“Maybe I’ll put a mercy bullet in his head after I kill you,” said Ribeye. He squeezed the trigger.
And then Adam jumped in front of me.
CHAPTER 27
Adam was not quick enough. The bullet sailed past him.
And past me.
And hit Kelley in the chest.
She fell to the ground.
Ribeye squeezed off another shot. Adam tried to dive in front of this one as well but missed again, and this bullet nicked my shoulder.
It felt like a mosquito bite delivered by an eight-hundred- pound mosquito.
Ribeye was about to fire a third shot, but then Mr. Click grabbed his foot.
“Oh, you want to play, huh?” asked Ribeye, grinning. “Play with this.”
He fired into Mr. Click’s back.
Ribeye’s grin vanished.
“You’re supposed to let go when I shoot you!” He shot Mr. Click in the back again. Then in the head. Mr. Click did not release his foot. “Hey, this ain’t right!”
Adam rushed at him, tackling Ribeye to the ground. Another gunshot went off, hitting the stone ceiling.
Kelley lay on her side, with a lot of blood on her shirt. I rushed over and crouched down next to her.
“Help Adam,” she wheezed.
Adam punched Ribeye in the face, but it was an Adam-quality punch and didn’t have much effect. I don’t know if zombies have adrenaline, but Mr. Click seemed to have a rush of it, and even though three of his four major appendages weren’t in working order and an alarming portion of his skull was now gone, he made his way over to the Adam/Ribeye fight.
He butted his head against Adam, pushing him off the thug and leaving a small brain stain on Adam’s shirt.
Then Mr. Click pounced on Ribeye.
This next part is gross.
He dug his teeth into Ribeye’s neck and...well, let’s just say that it wasn’t a sensual vampire bite. He swallowed without sufficiently chewing it up and then took another bite. And then a third bite, munching as quickly as a contestant in a hot dog- eating contest.
At this point, I realized that this was pretty much the end of poor Ribeye. So I focused entirely on Kelley.
“Does it hurt?” I asked her, tears streaming down my face.
“Yes.”
“That’s a good sign, though, isn’t it? It’s when it stops hurting that you’re in trouble.”
“No, it hurts like a [bleep].”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry I can’t. ” She paused to cough up some blood. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.. .get Mr. Click up the.. .ladder.”
“You can’t die on me,” I said. “I won’t let you.”
“Oh my God!” Adam screamed. “He just bit off his nose!”
“I may not.be dying,” said Kelley.
“Do you feel like you want to say, ‘So cold, so cold?’”
“No.”
“Maybe you’ll be okay.”
“Oh my God!” Adam screamed. “He just bit off a bunch of the flesh that had been around his nose!”
“Adam.” said Kelley. “.come here.”
Adam hurried over and crouched down on the other side of Kelley. “You’re going to be okay,” he told her. “I promise.”
“I need you.to help Tyler.”
“I will. I will.”
“I’m not going to.die.quite yet.” She coughed again. “I’ve got.more time than.Tyler does. Leave me here. Get the other doll.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” I said.
“Then you’re.going to hell.dumbass.”
“Hell is worse than dying in a sewer,” said Adam. “Let’s get moving.”
I gave Kelley a tender kiss on the lips. “We’ll be back.”
“If you.think you’ll.be.gone.for more than.let’s say.forty-five minutes.call an ambulance.”
“We will,” I promised. “Are you sure you’re okay being down here with Ribeye? He’s really unpleasant to look at.”
“I’ll.close my eyes.”
Adam and I pulled Mr. Click off Ribeye’s body. Mr. Click looked at us, and for a moment, I could see the humanity beneath the surface, as if his eyes were saying, That was for you. Now solve your problem so you can go on to live a long, happy life.
“How are we going to get him up there?” I asked.
“Well, we know he’s okay with being shot in the head,” said Adam. “If we cut him in two, we could each take half up the ladder.” “First let’s see if there’s a rope in the cab.”
There was indeed a rope in the trunk of the cab. That surprised me. I have no idea why it was there; honestly, I only threw that suggestion out there so we could say we tried another option before we sawed Mr. Click in half.
We tied one end of the rope around Mr. Click’s waist and the other end to the back of the taxi. Adam drove forward, raising his body, and yeah, it smacked the top of the manhole pretty darn hard, but it was still the least messy alternative.
We put his body in the trunk.
“I’ll be back soon!” I called down.
We got in the cab and sped off.
“Do you think she’s going to be okay?” Adam asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. She’s strong.”
“Do you think her parents are going to be mad that we left her bleeding in the sewer?”
“She’s going to be fine. Look, Adam, I just want to say that even though the bullet missed you and hit her, I appreciate that you tried to take a bullet for me.”
“That’s what friends do, right?”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. If the bullet had hit me, he still had other bullets, and he would’ve just shot you and Kelley
right after my sacrifice. The real person you should thank is Mr. Click.”
I turned around and looked at the backseat, which was as close as I could get to seeing the trunk. “Thanks, Mr. Click.”
“Do you think things are going to change for us?” Adam asked. “I would say yes.”
“I hope they don’t.”
“We’ll find out pretty soon.”
We were astonished that the only thing that went wrong during the drive was that we stopped at a red light and some guy got in the back of the cab and told us to take him to the airport. But then he saw my ear and said that he’d find another cab.
As we turned into my neighborhood, I said, “You’ve got to do this. If I go in there, they’ll never let me leave.”
“Okay. Where’s the doll?”
“Under my bed. It’s in the same box.”
“All right. Should I pretend that I don’t know where you are, or should I make up some cover story about how you were kidnapped and how I need the box to fill a ransom demand?” “Maybe you should just say, ‘Trust me, I’ll explain everything later,’ and not get into specifics. Be smooth.”
“Smooth. I can do that.”
As we turned onto my block, I could see that a police car was parked outside of my house. That was better than having three or four police cars parked out there. It meant that maybe the cops were there for the missing teenager and not the gang slayings and the escaped cadaver and stuff.
“Stop a couple of houses away so they don’
t see the car,” I said.
Adam turned off the engine. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.”
“Remember, smooth.”
“Smooth as silk.”
“Yes.”
“Smooth as chocolate.”
“Let it go, Adam.”
“One doll, coming up,” he said, getting out of the car. “Smooth. Smoooooooth.”
He jogged toward my house.
This would work out. He’d get the doll, and we’d be on our way. I checked my watch. We still had about...oh crap, only twenty minutes. I’d have to violate the occasional traffic law.
It would be fine. It would be fine.
And if not, how bad could hell really be? No doubt it was exaggerated for publicity purposes.
Adam knocked on my front door and then walked inside.
Sure, he’d be swarmed with questions, but I’m sure he’d handle the situation with the utmost smoothness, and he’d just stroll right out with the doll tucked under his arm.
Maybe the taxi should be closer to the house just in case.
I scooted into the driver’s seat and drove the car in front of my home. I knew that my mom and dad were suffering, and I felt terrible about it, but there was no time to explain. I could imagine the conversation.
Me: Mom! Dad! I’m alive!
Mom: Oh, thank goodness! We’re so relieved! Uh, where did you get that taxi?
Me: No time to explain! I have to go! Quickly!
Dad: No! We can’t let you out of our sight! Not after fearing we’d lost you forever!
Police Officer #1: You need to answer some questions for us first, young man.
Me: If I don’t get to Esmeralda’s House ofJewelry in the next twenty minutes, somebody will die!
Police Officer #2: Oh no! It’s our job to stop people from dying! Hop into our police car, and we’ll drive you right where you need to go, siren wailing and red-and-blue lights flashing! We’ll get you there in time!
Me: Is there any chance that I could move something from the taxi’s trunk to your trunk without you watching?
Police Officer #1: Probably not.
Me: What if I said I needed to bring along the body of that teacher who died today, and you could see the inside of his head?
