“The ghouls?” I hazarded, dropping to my knees and scooping up some dirt. “I don’t understand—why would they follow my arm?”
Max blew out a heavy breath. “Ghouls become servants to anything that frightens them,” he said. “They have a pack mentality.”
“And my arm is now top dog?”
“Yeah. It looks that way.” Max turned to me with a very serious expression on his face. “Now, come on. We’ve got to get into town…and that means facing an enemy every bit as dangerous as the ghouls and—sadly—a lot more intelligent.”
LESSON 9: LET OTHER PEOPLE DO THE TALKING
I saw the danger before we got anywhere near the boundary of Mortlake. Three shadowy, shifting shapes detached themselves from the first few buildings on the coast road and floated toward us.
“Every dead zone has border guardians that keep out intruders,” Max explained. “They’re called wraiths—and you don’t mess with them unless you have to.”
I nodded.
The wraiths approached. They reminded me of a bunch of kids wrapped up in their parents’ dusty bedsheets, but I knew they were deep trouble by the way Max tensed up as soon as they came into view.
“Let me do the talking,” Max growled, fur beginning to spring from his face and arms. “That way, at least you might get to keep your three remaining limbs.”
“Are they undead too?” I asked, my own hair bristling to back up the statement.
“Uh-huh,” said Max grimly. “The kind that nobody likes.”
As if aware of our fears, the three strangers immediately grounded themselves, grew long, spindly legs, and started advancing toward us in a shallow, awkward series of movements that made them look like puppets on the stage of a twisted theater.
Max padded to a halt and I climbed off him just as he furred up completely. He’d gone for the half-man, half-dog thing this time, bipedal with dripping fangs. He looked mean.
I waited for the things to approach, thrusting my hand into a tattered pocket to stop it from shaking.
There was definitely going to be a fight. Max hadn’t stopped mutating. The fur around his face seemed to tighten into a flurry of tiny needles and his hands turned into ravening claws of death. His bone structure changed too, his gums thickening to make room for the sprout of new teeth he was forming along the back of the existing ones.
I looked down at my empty arm socket and my weedy, tattered body but decided to man up and look hard anyway. I even spat on the ground, just to show I was ready for a dustup. Sadly, it didn’t work because a good third of my tongue hit the ground along with the spit. I guess it was the effort that counted. I was determined to show no fear, but—in truth—I was so scared I could probably have turned and run right at that second. Still, I wasn’t going to let them know that.
The figures stopped their progress about five feet away from us, and the lead one sprouted a sickly-sweet smile that revealed just as many teeth as Max now had cramming his own gum line.
“He’sssss not coming in,” it said, thrusting a needle-thin fingernail into Max’s chest. “He’sssss too dangerousssss.”
Me? Dangerous? In what universe, exactly?
“You’re not allowed to stop us,” said Max with a snarl. “Jemini got permission from Evil Clive.”
This announcement seemed to cause the three figures some sort of odd amusement, and the two at the back began to shiver in a way that suggested they might even be laughing.
“It knowssss where he is allll the time,” said the leader, quite firmly. “If we let him in…it will follow.”
The arm, I thought. They’re talking about my arm.
When Max didn’t reply, I stepped forward, very carefully. “What if I promise to just stay out of everyone’s way and not cause any troub—”
I never finished the sentence. The wraith came for me in a blinding burst of speed, but Max was there to meet it.
The werewolf shot forward and cannoned into the shrouded figure, which swiftly burst into flame and began to fight back. The other two flared up just as quickly, arms and legs rotting away as the fires licked up and down their bodies. One flew directly into the sky, screaming a sort of high-pitched whine, while the other—to my complete horror—made directly for me, bellowing with arcane fury.
I ran like a six-year-old girl in the opposite direction.
However, as I tried to put as much ground as possible between myself and the wraith, I did risk a glance back toward Max…and soon wished I hadn’t.
To this day, I’ve never in my life (or death) seen a fight quite like it.
The blazing creature punched Max repeatedly in the face with a fistful of flaming fury, sending up charred, smoldering tufts of fur and casting a million tiny embers into the air with each assault. All the while, it screamed like a stray hyena hollering for its mother.
Max, meanwhile, employed a mouthful of killer canines and two sets of razor claws to carve heavy, sickening lumps of flesh from the body of the beast. It was like watching some sort of demon barber going at a bad hairdo with lightning speed.
There was so much blood, flesh, and chaos that if you narrowed your eyes, the scene became a kaleidoscope of red and white flashes. It was absolutely, mind-meltingly disgusting.
Thankfully, I was otherwise occupied…and I continued to run like a tiny frightened spaniel at a dog-kicking contest. The thing was hard on my heels.
“Can’t we just talk about this?” I yelled, putting on an extra burst of speed. “You might get to like me if you’d just give me five minutes to—arrgghhh!”
I felt a sharp pain in my ankle, and it caused me to leap forward at an even greater pace. I ended up running around in an ever-wider circle, making my way back toward Max…
…who was in big trouble. Max’s fight was not going well. For every chunk the werewolf ripped out of his opponent, the wraith grew an immediate replacement. It must have been like fighting a video-game baddie with unlimited lives. To make matters worse, the fiery punches and kicks quickly took their toll on Max, who was seemingly caught in a deeply instinctual and feral fear of the flames. He was losing the fight and howling in pain with every new attack. At length, he gave one last bestial cry and collapsed.
My one friend had been defeated, and he was a total monster. What chance did I have?
I ran back toward the town, glancing over one shoulder to see the figure still in hot pursuit. Now it was deadly close. Burning fingers suddenly fastened onto my shoulder, lifting me off the ground and into the air.
“Leave Mortlake,” said the rasping voice. “We will not asssssssk you again.”
I looked down at the wraith, only just noticing that the flaming grip wasn’t actually burning my tattered skin.
The creature gave a vile hiss, and a forked tongue darted out of its slit-like mouth. Then it twisted around and hurled me the length—the entire length—of the field on the edge of town. I flew past the back of the grocery store, the garage, the hair salon, and even the town hall before hitting the church gates so hard that they exploded in a shower of splintered wood. I slammed onto the concrete steps that bordered the church, and the gatehouse roof came down on top of me. All in all, it was a violent and terrible attack that would have killed the world’s strongest man about twenty times over.
I felt…nothing.
I just sniffed and struggled to get up, pushing back the rubble of wood and rocks in my path. Sadly, I didn’t possess supernatural strength, so it took ages for me to break free. Still, it was the first time in my entire, miserable existence that I’d ever gotten up from a fight. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me—I was finally…
…a bit of a punk.
The wraith watched with a strangely irritated expression as I clambered over the last of the debris and marched back toward it.
This time, I went straight on the attack, leaping at the creature and screaming a battle cry that I’d heard in a fantasy movie when I was eleven years old. It sort of went, “Yargargarga!” I thi
nk.
It worked well. The wraith drew back at first, as if expecting some major onslaught, but when I simply gave it a sharp slap across its right ear, it took umbrage and went absolutely dynamite insane.
Screaming madly, it snatched me off the ground by my feet and began to spin around and around in wide, arcing circles. I think I might have actually fainted at one point, possibly due to the rush of air, because I don’t remember exactly what happened when it let go. I recall a greenish sort of hazy blur and after that nothing until I hit the church roof and took out the bell known in Mortlake as Ten Ton Tom. I landed on the far side of the church, broke two gravestones on the way down, and made a hole in the ground that would have taken six men hours to dig.
Then I got up again, dusted myself off, and hurried around to the front of the church. Wow, I was even running faster than usual—my legs might be rotting away, but there were at least a couple of muscles down there now. I was fighting the flab!
The wraiths had not only regrouped on the road into town, they had also doubled in number. Now there were lines of them! Reinforcements had been called by the one that had floated into the sky.
Max was staggering back toward me, looking like a ragged imitation of a really insane hellhound. At least he was alive—ish.
“Nice try,” he panted, blood dripping off him. “But it’s no good—we won’t get past them unless we get more help. Give me a few seconds to get my breath, and I’ll give the call…”
I nodded, still shaking, and looked down at my ravaged body. The green glow around me had vanished, but I still looked like the special in a butcher’s shop window. In fact, my rapid journey through the church wall had taken off almost an entire layer of skin.
I was about to remark on this when Max gave the most explosive, earsplitting howl I’ve ever heard in my life…
LESSON 10: NEVER TURN DOWN A FREE HAND
When Max eventually stopped howling, it was like all sound had been removed from the world. I couldn’t even hear my own pulse, but that was probably because I didn’t have one.
Then, from all over the rooftops of Mortlake in every direction, came a series of responding howls—some soft and sad, a few fierce and maddening.
“More werewolves?” I hazarded, feeling stupid for asking the question. After all, it was hardly likely to be a horde of killer hamsters, was it?
Max nodded. “Rogue ones,” he growled. “Let’s just hope they don’t attack us.”
I boggled at him. “There’s a chance of that? Aren’t they your friends?”
“Are you crazy? I wouldn’t call my own pack into a fight they couldn’t win! I gave a wounded cry instead—the rogue wolves will come to feed on me. Still, it’s definitely worth—ON THE GROUND! NOW!”
Max hit the grass, dragging me off my feet.
“Argh!”
My chin had barely grazed the first blade of grass when something black and shiny flew past our heads. It looked like some sort of demonic spear as it arced through the air and plowed directly into the muddle of wraiths congregating on the edge of the town. There was a muffled cry, then a scream. The first wraith exploded into a hail of green flames and burned up in the air.
Max and I glanced at each other, but our attention was quickly diverted back to the scene, where the thing had seemingly scampered from one wraith to another and was doing an equally grim job on its new victim. Within seconds, the edge of town was a chaotic fusion of tortured screams and billowing sheets wreathed in green flame. I was so scared by the sight, I almost swallowed my own tongue.
“Wha…is it?” I managed.
Max was straining to see. He’d craned his head over the grass but looked too scared to move any closer.
“It’s your lunatic arm!” he whispered, nearly frantic himself. “It’s killing them all!”
My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
“What! How?”
“I don’t know! It’s tearing them up or something! I’ve never seen anything take out a wraith before! EVER.”
There were several more of the crazy, whining screams…and then silence.
“Oh no!” Max whispered. “It’s standing on top of the fence like a cobra! It’s going to see us!”
I reached up with my own remaining arm and dragged him down until he was lying flat next to me.
“It can’t see anything,” I said, trying to forget that the arm had torn apart a pack of ghouls. “It’s just an arm.”
Max looked like a frightened puppy now—all his hair had withdrawn and he was shaking like a leaf. “It’s your arm,” he whimpered. “What does it want?”
I shrugged, trying to keep calm…but Max was getting more stressed out by the second.
To make matters worse, the earth started to churn up around us, arcing a line directly toward the fight.
“The ghouls!” I whispered, clawing at Max’s leg. “We’ve got to get out of here—it’s all going to kick off!”
Max looked down at me. “I don’t know why you’re panicking,” he snapped. “It’s not going to attack you, is it?”
I thought about what to tell him for a moment and then decided on the truth.
“I think it might,” I said. “It did threaten to kill me if it ever ran into me again.”
“You could have told me that!”
Everything had gone quiet.
Max risked another glance over the top of the grass.
“Has it gone?” I ventured.
He shook his head. “Nope—standing stock-still. I tell you, that thing totally freaks me out. It’s even twitching…oh no—that’s gross!”
“What?” I was about to sneak another peek at my evil arm when I realized that Max was looking at me.
“Your face! Worm! WORM!”
I quickly raised my hand to my left cheek and found both a newly opened hole and something slimy wriggling in it.
“Ugh!”
I pulled the twisty thing from my face and tossed it aside. We both watched it wriggle away. I’m not sure what smelled worse: the worm or whatever it had left in my cheek.
“Dude.” Max shook his head. “That’s sick.”
I returned my attention to the town road, where the ghouls were now erupting all around the arm like a little pack of loyal puppies. The sight sent a shudder right through me.
I was about to suggest to Max that we both carefully creep away when the werewolf pack arrived.
Then total chaos erupted…everywhere.
LESSON 11: LEARN TO MOVE FASTER THAN OTHER FOOD
Max had taken off at the speed of light, only this time he hadn’t bothered to drag me after him. I had to run at what for me was breakneck speed even to keep him in view. Behind us, a cacophony of howls, whines, and ripping limbs indicated that the werewolves had run straight into my evil arm and weren’t doing a whole lot better than the wraiths.
As we skirted the town in a wild arc, leaping low walls and short fences and moving along the backs of the narrow fishing cottages that made up the fringe of Mortlake, I saw Max begin to slow. It was just as well—I’d lost part of my foot as I cleared someone’s flower border and wasn’t really left with much solid bone to run on. In fact, I’d actually doubled back to get some of the toes that had gone AWOL, and I had them in my pocket. I didn’t want to let go of the important stuff, you know.
Eventually, Max trotted to a halt, glancing at me with an almost-casual indifference as I arrived next to him, almost literally falling apart with exhaustion.
“I th-thought you were supposed to be my Dead Buddy,” I panted.
Max gave me a guilty grin. “Sorry about that. We werewolves have a saying: you have to move faster than other food.”
“Nice.”
He flashed another canine smile. “There’s not much in this corpse yard of a town that scares me, but your arm is like—well, put it this way: I doubt the pack will last too long against it. If I had to make a bet, I would put money on there being a lot of werewolf soup for the ghouls tonight.”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling it was somehow necessary to apologize for my rogue limb even though I had no actual control over it. “I wish there was something I could do…”
Max sniffed the air again and seemed to relax slightly.
“Forget it,” he said. “Let’s just make for the school so you can get some answers. You must be, like, totally lost by all this stuff.”
“A bit.”
Max nodded, and we began to head for the distant outline of Mortlake Middle School.
As we walked along, a sudden memory flashed inside my mind. Max told the wraiths that I’m their new member…and he said two names.
“Who is Jemini?” I asked.
Max turned to look at me. “She’s a vampire,” he said. “I think you’ll like her: she’s second in command of our group.”
“And Evil Clive is the leader?”
“Yeah.”
“Odd name—Evil Clive. Is he actually, er, evil?”
Max whistled between his teeth and I definitely noticed him tensing up.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “You really have to earn his respect. Some folks think he’s the devil…but I reckon he’s just, like, well—you know—twisted beyond words.”
Great, I thought. Sounds like a really nice guy. Can’t wait to meet him.
LESSON 12: FIND SOME WEIRD FRIENDS
Mortlake Middle School’s tiny parking lot was deserted as Max and I crunched up the gravel toward the main building. I knew the place well, since I had gone there every day. At first, it looked as though nothing had changed. Then Max reached through the broken pane of glass on the front door and pulled it open…
…and I saw the display.
The flowers.
The cards.
Undead Ed Page 3
