Gravediggers (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-two
Ian

A
ll of twelve seconds after I've secured the boys' bunks and the surrounding area, I hear PJ screaming bloody murder in the arts and crafts cabin, and I go bolting down toward the main courtyard of the Homeroom Earth campsite. At first, I'm thinking that if
I
can hear him way over by the cabins, then the police officer by the bonfire pit should be on the job, but when I get there, there's no sign of him, and PJ's still shrieking
“HELP!”
between these crashing sounds and angry moans.

My feet are screaming,
LET'S GO—HE NEEDS YOU
, but out of nowhere, my brain comes in and skids me to a halt, and I think about the past couple of days, how when I ran after the buck or went down into the basement or picked up the dream catcher, it just made things a lot worse, and this is weird, because it actually works. My brain grabs my feet, and I decide that I'm going to get the teachers and bring them to PJ, because that's what he told me to do, because maybe I need to change it up sometimes and not run right into things.

I know, what's wrong with me?

The mess hall doors fly open with a bang when I hit them, and the cop from outside is standing there with a slice of pie looking totally blankly at me, and then windows and hallways rush past me and I'm in the mess hall, brightly lit and filled with the entire fifth and sixth grades who're sitting around eating dessert, and suddenly I've jumped up on a sixth-grade table and all the clinking and talking in the room goes silent with a gasp, and Coach Leider and Professor Randy are on their feet and looking relieved that I'm not dead, and Sean and Mitch and the rest of the kids in my grade are staring at me like I've just descended from heaven in a chicken suit, and for a moment I think about how filthy and ragged I must look, and then I remember PJ and say the first thing that comes to my head.

“YOU HAVE TO HELP US!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “SHE'S KILLING HIM!”

Guess that might have been a little much, because every girl in both years and at least two of the teachers, Ms. Dean and Señora Alanzo, scream like crazy people. Everyone in an obnoxious yellow Homeroom Earth shirt comes rushing for me, almost as scary as the zombies with their angry looks and crackling walkie-talkies. The cop from outside is joined by a second person in uniform, and they both put hands to the guns at their sides. A big arm wraps around my legs, and Coach Leider drags me off the table.

“Buckley! Where have you been?” he yells.

“Arts and crafts building, now!” I yell back at him.

“What's he talking about?” asks Professor Randy,

“PJ's in danger!” I shout, moving toward the door and praying that my best friend has somehow managed to hold his own. “We need to help him! Please, Coach!”

Coach stares at me dumbfounded, and then he springs into action, running alongside me with his shoulders down. “Take me to him,” he booms, and over his shoulder calls, “Randy, bring the cops!”

The screams have stopped as we scale the porch stairs and burst into the arts and crafts cabin, Coach next to me, the rest of Homeroom Earth hot on our heels. An ugly smell comes from down one hallway, and I sprint toward it. Sticky black skeleton footprints on the floor lead down a hallway to the door labeled
DAYROOM
. From under the door comes a steady stream of smelly water. Is it blood? Am I too late?

When I yank open the door, a wall of steam and moldy stench hits me in the face, and I throw my arm across my mouth to keep from losing my lunch. PJ sits huddled in one corner of the room, trembling and panting, while Kendra is draped over the edge of an overturned art table, a bucket clutched in her shaking hands. On the floor in front of them is a chunky pile of horrible black stuff and human bones, slowly spreading out into the pool of water that sits on the floor. The skull among the gooey blackness lies at PJ's feet, mouth opening further and further until everything holding it together is breaking up into the puddle, melting like the Wicked freakin' Witch. PJ's watching the whole dissolving process with an intense grimace, like he's afraid it's going to suck back up into a body again and leap toward him.

From over my shoulder, I hear the Homeroom Earth staff reach us and gasp aloud.

“What the hell is going on here?” shouts Professor Randy in a voice that sounds nothing like the supernice guy who introduced himself to us a couple days ago.

“Wilson, Wright,” says Coach. “Status report. How you doing?”

Kendra and PJ finally look up at us, their eyes wide with panic.

“I, uh,” says Kendra, “was attempting to . . . give PJ a bath.” She nods at the bucket in her hands, the muck on the floor.

“Yeah,” says PJ. He nudges the skull on the floor with his sneaker. “I was . . . dirtier than I thought.”

I try not to laugh, but I'm riding on this wave of excitement that they're still alive and this storm of embarrassment that's coming off Coach, so I start cracking up right there, my hands on my knees, my eyes tearing up, just laughing and laughing. And then Kendra and PJ start laughing, too, clutching their stomachs and whooping to the sky. Kendra laughs so hard, she nearly slips in the goo at her feet, and that only gets PJ and me laughing harder.

No one else finds any of this funny.

 

Of course, we get in trouble. Big trouble, the kind of trouble a sixth grader hears about but thinks will never happen to him.

Ten minutes later, we're sitting in the office, which doesn't have a single cute student-made piece of art in it, just a desk, a bulletin board, a couple of phones, and a gigantic coffee maker.

For a moment, the grumpy horde of counselors and teachers turn their backs to us, and I look over at my friends.

“How'd it go?” I ask.

“We got her,” breathes Kendra. “Hot water. Melted her dried-up flesh.”

“PJ, you okay?” I don't ask if he got bit, but—

“No bites, no scratches,” he says with a relieved shudder. “Though I did watch her eat a mouse whole.”

“Sick.”

Then it's chew-out time. First up, Ms. Brandt does the talking while Mr. Harder stands behind her, arms crossed.

“You didn't once think,” she squeaks, “of how I'd feel when I found three of you gone, did you? You assumed I'd be enraged, which I
was
, but you never thought about how worried I'd be, knowing you three could be out there alone in the forest with no one to—” Her voice cracks, and she covers her eyes with her hand, her face curling up like she's about to cry.

“We . . . didn't mean anything by it” is all I can say. Never thought I'd feel like such a goon for making a teacher cry.

Then we get Professor Randy, flanked by Homeroom Earth counselors.

“I gotta say, I have dealt with some bad apples in my day,” he says, pacing, “but what you did was the most
dis
respectful
fool
hardy shenaniganery I have ever
seen
. I gave you a measly
four rules,
and you couldn't obey
one
of them.”

“What'd I tell you?” whispers Kendra, staring at her feet.

Coach Leider brings up the end, and he's actually pretty cool about it.

“You three are back at base, safe and sound,” he says, waving a huge hand in front of us like he's wiping our records clean. “That's all that matters. I'm officially pleased. But we've got an art room full of liquefied human remains over there, troops. So forget whose fault this is. I could care less. No one's in trouble yet. But I need to know
what happened
back there.”

And we don't say squat. I sit there and feel like a huge idiot, and the look on Kendra's face tells me she's doing the same—being in trouble feels like a weight pressing down on you, especially for kids like us, who don't see the inside of the principal's office much—but we never say word one of the truth. We know better. Coach is right; we're lucky to be alive. It would only ruin the moment to start saying the dead walk and end the day in straitjackets.

Finally, Coach Leider and Professor Randy step aside, and two cops, all blue and silver, hands on their belts, step in. They smile at us with chubby faces, and their voices make it sound like we're six years old.

“Well, guys,” says Cop One, “we've got a bit of a situation on our hands here. First of all, which one of you is Ian Buckley?”

Uh-oh. “Me,” I say, or croak, more like it.

Cop Two gives me a
Sorry, kid
smile and says, “Your father's on his way. Should be here any minute.”

This is the worst news I've gotten all trip, easily worse than finding out zombies are real. Next to me, PJ clucks and scratches his head. He knows about my dad—the dude is unmovable, impossible to argue with, totally hard-core. I'm in trouble.

“Second,” says Cop One, getting out a pen and a small pad of paper, “we need to hear about what happened on that mountain—specifically, what happened to result in a puddle of human bones on the floor of the arts and crafts building.”

We glance at one another but stay silent. What do we do from here?

“The . . . Pine City Dancers,” says PJ softly. Professor Randy goes a shade paler and the cops are all ears.

“That can't be,” says one cop, taking his hat off. “We scoured the countryside, kid. They're not up there.”

“Who are the Pine City Dancers?” asks Coach Leider.

“Well, we, uh, lost a few hikers around here last year,” mumbles Professor Randy, glancing at the floor.

“You
what
?” bellows Coach. “Were you going to tell us about that at any point?”

Professor Randy mumbles something like “Bad for business.”

“We found them,” says PJ. “Up on the mountain. But they weren't dead. They . . .” He freezes, his mouth open, knowing what will happen if he says—

“Zombies,” says Kendra.

The back of my neck prickles. PJ hisses through his teeth. The adults in the room share a glance, then look back at Kendra. “Excuse me, Wright?” asks Coach.

“You couldn't find the Pine City Dancers because they became zombies. Ambulatory corpses. The living dead.”

Another silence falls over the room, this one loaded with a little more weird disbelief, and the truth about what happened feels more and more like a bad joke with every second that the punch line is out there.

But then my dad bursts through the door, so I have a whole new set of things to feel gut-wrenchingly embarrassed about.

My dad isn't a big listener. He doesn't ignore me or tell me to shut up or whatever— he's a cool dad and all—he just has this big tough front to him, like a wall you can't break through, and it's impervious to any excuse or alibi. When my dad has an idea about something, no one's changing his mind, even if he's wrong. When he thinks something needs to be taken care of, he takes care of it. And if he's angry, wow, forget about it.

And here he is, charging through the door, and he is
way
angry.

“Ian, my God,” he booms, and throws his arms around me, yanks me to his chest. Then he pulls me out at arm's length and gives me a once-over. “You okay? You hurt? Did you get bitten by an animal or anything?”

Or anything.
“I'm fine, Dad,” I say.

“Excuse me, Mr. Buckley,” says Professor Randy, “but your son's friend just told us something of importance—”

“No more questions!” shouts Dad, jabbing a finger into Randy's face. “Not without my lawyer present! How dare you interrogate my son after what he's been through? You better hope I don't sue you for utter incompetence, letting him run off like that! You, too, Larry!” He points at Coach Leider. “My son's on your JV team, for Pete's sake, and you let him get stranded in the woods? Ridiculous.”

Everyone falls quiet, shoulders raised, mouths clamped shut. No one can talk back to him.

“Ian, get your things. We're leaving.” Suddenly, I'm standing up, even though I don't want to. He points to the door and I walk toward it. Who's the zombie now? “You better thank your lucky stars that Coach Leider called me when you went missing. Without me here, the police would've—”

“My parents aren't here, are they?” whispers PJ.

“Not another word out of you!” snaps Dad. “Not another
word
, Wilson! You stay away from Ian from now on, got it? My boy doesn't need people like you getting him lost in the woods for days! And
you
!” he says to Kendra. “You're the girl who hit Ian with a book, aren't you? Oh, I remember
you
, missy. I remember that
hair.
”

“Dad,” I say.

“You two better tell your fathers that if I see them anytime in the near future, I'll let them know what I th—”

“Dad, it was my fault.”

“Ian, I'm talking.”

“No,
I'm
talking!” I yell, my voice going all high and whiny. It gets Dad's attention, though, and he looks at me like
What's wrong with you
, so I keep at it. “It was my fault, okay? I saw this deer in the woods, and I wanted to see it up close, so I ran into the woods and made PJ and Kendra follow me. They tried to hold me back, but I went anyway.” Kendra and PJ both beam at me, although PJ looks a little amused that I'm putting myself this much on the line. I nod to them, and Kendra salutes back.

“Ian, you don't have to do that,” says Coach Leider.

“
Did
you call their folks?” I yell at Coach. “Huh? Or just mine? Just the kid on your team?” Coach opens and closes his mouth a couple of times. Dad looks ready to explode. “This is all my fault, so if anyone should be getting yelled at or punished, it's me!” I yank my shoulder out from under Dad's hand and walk back to my folding chair next to PJ and Kendra, my friends, and I sit back down, staring at my dad and Coach, and for the first time in forever I feel like I'm doing the right thing.