Gravediggers (23 page)

“She all right?” asks the sheriff.

“She's fine,” says Ian. Then: “I . . . don't think we need to go any farther than this, guys.”

Ian's words sting me. All we need right now are facts, and yes, O'Dea burned the diary full of all the facts we had, but there has to be proof somewhere on the mountain. Doesn't there? “What? No, wait,” I say. “We can still go up there!”

Ian looks back at the sheriff. “Can we talk alone for a second? Just the three of us. You two head back to the car.”

“Don't try to pull a fast one on me here, son,” says the sheriff.

“I promise we just want to talk to her.” Reluctantly, the sheriff and Professor Randy shrug at each other and head back to the SUV.

“We were here,” I say. “She was here. They attacked us.” I hold out my hands to PJ, who just stares at his camera. “
Zombies!
See, I said it! Zombies! They're real! If we go up there and introduce them to O'Dea, she can—”

“Kendra, what'll happen if we go up there?” says Ian, pointing over the wall. “We'll get lost again. O'Dea will have to save us from dying out there, and this time we'll be bringing attention down on her, too. We can't do it.”

“But we didn't make this up! Walking dead people, magic, curses! PJ, this is your chance to—”

But PJ is staring at his camera with a defeated look on his face, and I can already see that he agrees with Ian. “We can't risk going back up there,” he mumbles. “We're okay. Compared to never seeing our families again, this just . . . doesn't matter.”

“It
does
matter! It matters to
me
!”
Try not to break down, Kendra. You've been so good about it so far.

“Maybe things weren't what we thought they were,” says PJ. “Maybe O'Dea wasn't as good a witch as she said she was. I mean, burning that diary, our only proof of what happened . . . it doesn't look good. And Ian's right, we don't want to get
more
people lost up on this mountain.”

“Let's just go home,” says Ian. “All that matters is that we're safe. Right?”

“But I—” Then I lose my composure and begin crying, like a baby. It's involuntary. I wanted to show the world that horrible, impossible things
were
out there, and instead I have nothing except three missing kids talking about movie monsters. It's too much, and I am overwhelmed by tears.

And out of nowhere, Ian Buckley, the biggest jerk in my school, whose face I once bashed with a textbook for being a sexist, comes over and gives me a bear hug while I cry, and that only makes me cry harder.

“It's not fair,” I sob repeatedly into his shoulder.

“Oh, it's totally lame, no question,” he says. Once I stop shaking, he holds me out at arm's length. “But you know what these woods are capable of.” He smiles. “You've got to swallow that pride. There are more important things.”

His words warm my heart enough to overcome the tears. Once I've sniffled a bit and wiped at my eyes with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I say, “What do we tell them? We knew about the Pine City Dancers, and the stone wall . . . how do we explain that?”

Ian looks to PJ. “Any ideas?”

PJ thinks for a moment, his mind mapping out the plot of our next act. “We tell them that Jeremy Morris told us about the Pine City Dancers,” he says. “Then we say that we accidentally ate some wild berries. They were poisonous and caused a hallucination.”

“You can probably do better than that,” I say. “If a movie ended like that, you'd be angry about it.”

PJ laughs but then shakes his head. “Maybe. But right now, I just want to get out of here. These woods still give me the creeps.”

“Okay,” says Ian. “Let's head back and make ourselves look dumb.”

“Not yet,” says PJ. He gives me his handheld camera. “I want to do something before we go.”

Chapter Twenty-four
PJ

“T
o whom this may concern,” I say into the glowing red light and the shiny round iris. “My name is Peter Jacob Wilson.” Nothing sounds worse than my full name. “I'm eleven years old. Me and my two friends broke off from a class trip and got lost in these woods, and we were attacked and hunted down by . . . something. Something evil, and unnatural. So if you've found this, take it as a warning. Turn back.” Our whole journey flashes before my eyes, and a chill shudders through me.

“You're not okay, are you? Everything feels wrong, doesn't it? That's not you; it's this place. These woods want to hurt you.” Ian wraps his arms around himself. Kendra nods, never taking her eye from the camera screen. “I know how you feel. Something about whatever's on the other side of this wall seems cool, even if it feels strange and scary. Trust me when I say this: there are better adventures, and there are worse things out here than you can imagine. Turn around, and head downhill, and you should reach camp. It might take a while, but you should be okay. Do it for your family and your friends.” I'm out of stuff to say, but I feel like I need to send them off. “I'm not afraid of this place anymore, but you should be. This isn't a movie; it's real. Get out now.”

There's a pause, and then a beep as Kendra presses the button. “Got it,” she says. “Now what?”

This is the part that kills me. “Leave it here.”

Kendra blinks. “Just . . . leave it here?”

“For whoever finds it.”
God
, this
sucks
. It's taking everything in my power not to snatch my device from Kendra's hands, pocket it, say forget the whole thing. But this needs doing. If we aren't going to blow this thing wide open—and we can't now, not with the diary gone and O'Dea who knows where—then we at least need to try and help people. “Let's just . . . leave it and go, okay?”

“Really?” says Ian. “Dude, that's your camera.”

“Well, yeah,” I say, “but . . . I think I'll be okay without it.” No, I don't think; I know. It's just a thing, a gadget. I'm safe. We're safe. “But wait. Does one of you have a pen?”

“Actually . . . ,” says Kendra, and hands me a felt-tip pen. On the side of my handheld device, I scribble
WATCH ME TO LIVE
in big letters, then place it gently at the base of the wall.

Over by the car, the sheriff and Professor Randy are admiring the view of the mountain from up here.

“You guys have a little talk?” asks Sheriff McMustache.

“Yeah,” I tell him. I look at the other two, and they both nod. “I guess it's time we went home.”

 

We have to pack up quickly, as everyone else has already gotten ready to get on the bus and get out of there (from what little I've heard, Homeroom Earth was pretty lame, seeing as most of the outdoor activities were canceled once we disappeared; apparently, there was a lot of movie watching in the mess hall).

As Ian and I stuff our clothes and stuff into our backpacks, Coach Leider comes to the cabin door. “Wilson, Buckley, front and center.” When we approach him, he hands me my camcorder, and though I've learned that life can't be lived behind a camera, its weight and buttons feel delicious in my hands.

“Wilson, we should talk at some point,” he booms. “Bet the JV basketball team could use a good videographer, get some practice footage for us to study.”

“Sure thing,” I tell him, surprised but kind of excited. Is this how male bonding feels? I'm unsure.

“Got to say, I'm not psyched about your disappearing act,” he says. “That said, I just wanted you to know that I'm impressed you made it off that mountain unharmed. Really shows what a wolf pack you two are.”

“We three,” says Ian. “Kendra Wright really saved our butts out there, Coach.”

“I'll talk to Coach Arnholdt about recruiting her for a team,” says Coach. “Maybe rugby. We'll see. Just . . . do me a favor, guys, maybe keep the zombie talk down. Makes you guys look a little soft in the head.”

“Gotcha,” I say.

“Good,” he says, motioning us out the door. “Come on, they're waiting.”

The buses rattle and rumble in the parking lot. In front of the sixth-grade bus, the sheriff hands me my backpack. I'd almost forgotten about it.

“We found a book, too—a picture book, for little kids—but it had all that muck on it,” he says. “We had to throw it away.”

Ugh. It's like a punch in the heart, but I can't freak out about it too much. These things happen in zombie warfare. “Has anyone looked into those human remains?”

The sheriff kicks a rock. “We gotta send the teeth in to be studied. Gonna be a while, but they say it might be one of those poor dancers who got lost up there last year. They've never seen anything decay this fast, is all.” He stares hard at me, almost smiling. “Wish I knew what you three kids're hiding.”

“Just don't let anyone hike on that hill,” I tell him. “Make it illegal. Put up a fence. I don't care.”

“Wilson!” yells Coach Leider from the bus. “Let's get going.”

“Gotta run,” I tell him. “It's been real.”

“Watch it, kid,” he says.

Once we're on the bus and the teachers are safely twenty-eight rows away from us, half of our class huddles around Ian and me and starts firing off questions—what actually happened, did we really tell the cops we saw zombies, was there actually a body in the art room, what's the deal with that Kendra girl. Before I can say anything, Ian goes off, spinning this weird half-true tale of what we just went through. Note to self: consider Ian as a screenwriter.

“This big cat comes around a tree in front of us, right?” he's saying. “It's a . . . Kendra?”

“A Canada lynx,” says Kendra from a few seats away. She rests her head on the seat back, letting herself enjoy Ian's story even as she taps a zillion text messages into her smartphone. “They're native to these parts. Usually harmless.”

“Right, so this Canada lynx, he's got his teeth bared, his fur up. Kendra and I have already scared one of them off, but this one's looking hungrier than the rest, a little skinnier, a little meaner, like he's, uh, uuuh—”

“Malnourished,” says Kendra.

“What do lynxes eat, Kendra?” asks Jenny Dylan.

“What website are you on?” says Barbara, peering at Kendra's phone. “You should sit with us at lunch tomorrow.”

“Sure, whatever,” says Kendra, waving them aside. “Let Ian finish.”

“Thanks. Anyway,” says Ian, “he's growling, just
snarling
at us, and I'm thinking that this is it, this is a big mean-looking animal here, and he's going to gnaw my face off. Time to accept fate, right? And then there's this creaking noise, and this
crack
, and I look over”—he hikes a thumb at me—“and PJ is just putting his back into a dead tree. The tree falls over and
crushes
this lynx to death.”

“No way,” says Mitchell.

“I call shenanigans on that,” says Katey Price.

“Scout's honor, guys,” says Ian. “When all the dust clears away, there's just this huge termite-eaten tree on the ground with a big nasty-looking claw coming out from under it.”

“Was this before or after the rattlesnakes?” asks Tom Richter.

“Way before,” says Ian. “The rattlesnakes weren't until the next day, when PJ got lost way up on the mountain and Kendra and I had to find him.”

“That poor lynx,” coos one of the girls.

“Poor nothing. You should've seen these things. They were—” Ian pauses for a moment, mouth hanging open, and it's like someone just replayed him a video of the past two days, like he sees the army of reaching hands and moaning dead mouths all over again. His face goes a little white. “They were horrible,” he says, a lot quieter. “Really horrible.”

“That's a load of bull,” says Sean Cunningham. “Never happened.”

“Whatever, dude, you weren't there,” says Ian.

“Doesn't matter. Didn't happen. You didn't fight any lynxes and that kid didn't knock over any tree.” Sean folds his arms and sneers at me. “I mean, look at him.”

Ian gets that look in his eyes, sort of like he did with the buck, like he's going to go rushing headfirst into a fight, and I figure he's in enough trouble already. “Shut up, Cunningham,” I say. “Nobody asked you.”

“Watch your mouth, Wilson.”

“Or what?” I yell at him. “You're gonna beat me up? I just spent two days fighting off wild animals in the woods, you idiot. Just
try
making my life any worse than it's been for the last forty-eight hours.”

Everyone laughs, and I feel like I've won. Sean gives me this evil stare but goes quiet. Ian gets back to his story, moving on to the part where he and Kendra accidentally fell down a gorge and got separated from me. Kendra fills in the blanks, and sometimes corrects his grammar.

 

Back at school, Ian's dad is waiting outside the bus. Before we can even say good-bye to him, Ian is whisked into the family car and driven away. Ms. Brandt finds Kendra and me and leads us to our homeroom, where our parents are waiting.

Our folks look a little funny, sitting at our desks and drumming their fingers. When Kendra and I enter, my mom bursts into tears and rushes over to me, throwing her arms around me, then touching every part of my face and shoulders like she's checking to make sure nothing's broken.

“You had us pretty scared for a little bit there,” says my dad. He's trying to sound at least a little angry, but mostly he just looks grateful.

Glancing across the room, I see the Wrights talking to Kendra. They both wear angular business clothes and worried but stern expressions. Her mother stands behind her, one hand on her shoulder, while her dad crouches in front of her, engaging her in soft, intense conversation. When she sees me glancing her way, I get a thumbs-up, leading her parents to shoot me a sidelong stare and a faint smile.

“I'll contact you tonight,” says Kendra as my folks usher me out.

“Who's that?” asks my mom as we head down the hallway.

“My friend Kendra,” I tell her.

I expect the car ride home to be a lot of chewing out, but it's quite the opposite—my parents mostly ask if I'm okay, if there's anything I need. They ask a few questions, but I do my best to avoid details. When I talk about chasing the buck, my dad gets all indignant.

“I'm going to call Vince Buckley when we get home,” he says softly. “Give him a piece of my mind.”

When we pull into the driveway, my mom smiles back at me and says, “There's someone here who's going to be very happy to see you.”

I'm barely in the door before Kyra rushes down the stairs to greet me, all chubby face and mussed brown hair. When I hug her, I almost cry my eyes out and squeeze the life out of her.

“You said you were gonna call home and read me my story,” she says. “You didn't. Mom says you got in trouble.”

“I know,” I say. “I'm sorry. I got lost in the woods instead.” And even though she's way too young to understand it, I tell her anyway: “I missed you a lot, and it helped me get through it. You kept me going for a while.”

“I missed you, too,” she says.

Over dinner, Mom and Dad grill me about how I made it through the night. Mom tears up three different times, at the lynx, my twisted ankle, and us having to take shelter from the rain (obviously I keep my mouth shut about O'Dea, evil curses, and the living dead). More than anything, they're interested in Kendra Wright. When I first mention her, they look at each other with this stupid
Our son hanging out with a girl
? expression, like they're already planning on sending out wedding invitations. They ask about her parents, her friends, how she is at school. When I explain that we call her Queen Brain and that she once cracked Ian in the face with a textbook, Mom says, “I like her already.”

After dinner, Dad tells me to go to my room and stay there until it's time to read Kyra her story. I head upstairs and begin fiddling around with my camcorder, sturdy, heavy. If only I'd had this on the mountain, I could've been the biggest viral video sensation on earth. Maybe it's better this way, though. I can't explain why, but maybe this is my story, Ian and Kendra's, too, but no one else's.

A few minutes later, Mom pokes her head in and says I have a phone call.

“How you doing, man?” asks Ian. He sounds beat.

“All right. I'm getting interrogated pretty hard.”

“You have no idea, man. My dad's on the warpath. Apparently, your dad just called him and gave him the third degree, and Kendra's mom called him earlier and explained to him the exact steps she could take tonight toward suing him. Guess I've never been in trouble like this before. Anyway, I'm not allowed to hang out with you anymore or whatever.”

“Like that'll happen.”

“Right? Listen, I decided not to tell them anything about what really went on. Figured the less they know, the better. Plus, if I tell them the truth, I'll probably have to go see the school counselor.”

“That sounds good. Let's stick with
We made it all up
if the z-word comes up again.”

“Right on.” There's shouting in the background on the other end. “I gotta go. See you at school.”

We hang up, but before I can get to my room, my mom comes out of her office and taps me on the shoulder. “You have someone who wants to talk to you.”

“At the door?”

“On the family computer,” she says. “In the future, if you could ask your friends not to hack into our home PC, that'd be great.”

When I sit down at the computer, it's blank except for a green line. “Hello?”

“Is Peter Jacob there?” says the line, vibrating with each word.