Gravediggers (11 page)

“Get it off!” he yelps. “Get it off get it off get it off—” I grab the hand with both of mine, but when I yank it from PJ's sleeve, the whole thing comes apart in a dusty, gooey mess in my grip, small finger bones falling out of the powdery gunk and tumbling to the ground beneath us.

“Oh my
God
,” moans PJ, his face turning green.

The zombie stumbles into a nearby tree, the trunk creaking as she leans against it, and then with a howl, she lunges toward us—and then stops. Her teeth snap, her arms snatch at the air, and her feet slide in the mud as she tries to walk, but something keeps her from gaining ground.

“Look,” says Kendra, “around her neck!”

There's some kind of rope attached to her neck, one of those lanyards you hang whistles and glasses and stuff from; it's caught in one of the branches of the dead tree she stumbled into. With every lurch forward, the rope tightens, and the whole tree shakes.

Wait. Hold on. The creaking, the bending. The tree the zombie is caught on is like her—dead, rotten, like the one we found in the woods earlier.

Oh man, I have an idea.

“Hold on!” I shout to Kendra, then circle around to the other side of the dead tree. I take a few steps back and then bodycheck the trunk as hard as I can. Nothing.

I go again, the bark biting my shoulder through my shirt as I push with all my might. There's a creak, but nothing else. Then, I hear a grunt next to me, and I see Kendra putting her shoulder into the tree, too, then PJ, and now we're doing a sweaty and desperate imitation of our tree-dropping routine from earlier, only now there's a living corpse turning back toward us and stumbling forward with her arms spread open and her mouth gaping wide.

“One . . . two . . . three!” I yell, and the three of us clench our eyes shut, put our backs into it, and heave.

Come on, come on, do it, do it,
break, BREAK
—

There's that sound, that sharp crack that echoes through the whole forest, and then the dead tree begins moving with our shoulders. The zombie's head lifts up to stare at the oncoming tree trunk, and for a second I see a look on her face, like a lightbulb just went off over her head—
uh-oh—
before the tree comes crashing down on her with a BOOM.

Chapter Eleven
Kendra

F
ield research requires dynamic rationality. All the greats—Jane Goodall, Amelia Earhart—took the time to be brilliant before rushing into action. And part of being brilliant is being able to comprehend any situation. If one
must
leap into the fray, one's mind must be experienced enough to think its way through even the most unbelievable or upsetting scenario. Up until now, I assumed my own mind was just such a versatile muscle.

This, though, I . . . I just don't know.

The echoing crash of the fallen tree rings in my ears over and over again, until I take a few long, deep breaths and realize that the echoing boom is actually my heart beating against my rib cage. My brain and body feel cold and hot in uncontrollable waves, no matter how many times I tell myself that it's over, the threat is gone. My mind's words fall on deaf ears. The scene at my feet seems too horrific to think past.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ian's chest rising and falling, and PJ drops to one knee. There is a tree on the ground in front of me, dead and dusty, recently felled. There is the spiny trunk, a mass of upright splinters. And sprouting out from under the fallen tree, like the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East, is the hand of what I'm supposed to believe is a . . . a murderous walking dead person.

And maybe it's the ludicrousness of thinking such a thing, or the sheer horror of it, or my complete inability to
calm down, Kendra
, but I'm . . . having a hard time grasping any of this.

If Mom is right about following my gut, then yes, there's an evil living corpse underneath this tree. My gut is certain of that. My head, though, refuses to wrap itself around the idea.

“Is it dead?” pants Ian. “I mean, dead-dead. Dead­
er
. Dead as in—”

“Yes,” I state firmly, if only to quiet the frantic look in his eyes. “You crushed it.”

“I wish we could just go home,” mumbles PJ.

“W-w-we better get out of here,” stammers Ian. “The other ones probably heard that. We need to leave, right now.”

He's right. That's a good idea, Kendra. Remember when you had those? Stop thinking about the terrible thing under the tree. Stop staring at the pale, filthy hand at the end of the fur-lined sleeve. You've seen enough.

But no, I can't let it go that easily. There has to be a clue, an explanation. Don't leave quite yet—look. There, next to her hand. It's square, it's shiny, it's what was tied around her neck, what leashed her to the dead tree.

“What are you doing?” yells Ian while I crouch down and grab the thin laminated square. Yes. It's a badge, an ID of some kind, dangling out from under the fragile bark of the dead tree, just between the telltale hand and an ever-growing pool of black viscous fluid. My hand darts out, tugs hard, and yanks it free before the dreadful arm can leap back to un-life and snap my bones in an icy grip.

“What is it?” asks PJ, wobbling back to his feet. The two boys close in around my shoulders as I catch the square in a patch of moonlight coming between the trees.

“It's some sort of identification card,” I tell them as I use my sleeve to wipe at the dirt covering it. “Hikers wear these around their necks. It's like dog tags for soldiers.”

“In case they ever die up here on the mountain,” quivers PJ, saying what my mind has been trying to ignore.

The film of black filth smears away from the front of the ID, and a girl stares back at us, the smiling, fresh-faced version of the creature that just attacked us, with long brown hair and a small button nose. The name next to her head reads—

“Deborah Palmer,” I say, despair settling on me like a heavy, damp cloud, “the girl who wrote the diary.”

“Whoa, you mean the zombies are the
Pine City Dancers
?” asks Ian.

All I can do is nod.

“The Pine City Dancers are back from the grave, trying to eat us,” mutters PJ.

“Kendra, do you still have that diary?” Ian questions.

My hand darts through my bag until it feels soft, sodden pages squeeze together. Somehow, through the panic, I remembered to toss it in here. “Yes,” I say through a sigh of relief. “Let's examine—”

“No,” says PJ. “We have to get out of here first. They're probably already on their way.”

Still a good idea, Kendra. But stop, breathe, think—maybe this time, you shouldn't wander aimlessly. North? No, you probably can't find it right now without sun to watch a stick's shadow by, and it's too dark to look for moss or cobwebs on the side of a tree. For all you know, north could take you right back to the cabin.

Look at the facts. What are you trying to do? Avoid a threat. What are that threat's natural qualities? Slow moving, unbalanced, uncoordinated, strong but not terribly hardy. It walks unstoppably, has considerable physical strength, and shows resilience to pain, but it's basically mindless.

“Let's head uphill” is my final answer. “It'll be a harder climb for them, and it'll give us the higher ground, so we can see them in time if they find us.”

“That sounds good,” says Ian. “PJ, can your ankle take some climbing?”

“I'll manage,” grumbles PJ.

The rain has died down, but the forest is slick with mud, and our uphill trajectory is steadily treacherous. PJ's the first to take a spill, his bad ankle causing him to go clawing for the ground, but only a few minutes later, I feel the earth slip out from under me as my sneaker squeaks on a patch of moss, and then I'm facedown in the dirt. Ian helps us up, but five minutes later, he takes a spill of his own, catching his foot in a small burrow and nearly smashing his knee on a rock. From there on out, we proceed slowly, carefully finding our footing along the mossy mountainside and making sure that PJ can keep up with Ian and me.

PJ's limp grows more pronounced with every minute, but he's doing his best to cover it, supporting himself against the nearest tree and looking away whenever he puts too much pressure on his bad ankle and has to grunt with pain. Ian prattles the occasional tidbit about the terrain—“Careful here, there's a hole there, watch that tree root”—and I make sure to point out nearby landmarks in case we need to retrace our steps, but PJ is completely silent, lost in an ever-present scowl of concentration on his foot.

“Sorry I'm slowing you down,” he says after a while.

“It's fine, man,” says Ian, slapping him lightly on the arm. “Take your time. As long as you're faster than the zombies, you'll be okay.”

PJ nods, and then a strange little smile crosses his face. He lets his injured leg go limp and drags it along the forest floor. His hands jut out stiffly in front of him, and he lets out a breathy moan that's far too accurate an impression of the ones we just heard.

“They're coming to get you, Deborah,” he moans. When Ian gasps and takes a step back, PJ glances at us with a tired expression of amusement and says, “Too soon?”

As exhausted as I am, I can't help but laugh a little at our meek friend trying to buck us up. Ian joins in, still a little shocked by PJ's mimicry. The response seems to put some warmth in PJ's face and makes him climb a little faster.

In the ground in front of us opens a deep ravine, its edges dotted with twisted almost-trees bending their long branches down into the muck-filled pit below. When we reach the precipice, we all sit down to catch our breaths. Past the ravine, the mountain slopes up sharply, and the leaf-covered ground gives way to stony terrain that looks wet, loose, and treacherous.

Observing it, I fret about our progress from here on, especially given our injured party. The descent down into the ravine is more than ten feet. We'll have to find a way around it or slowly help each other down, but even then, the steep-sloping mountain beyond it will be a hard climb.

You've been lucky so far, Kendra, only dealing with leafy forests with plenty of trees. From here on out, you've got a real mountain to deal with.

“What do you think turned the Pine City Dancers into zombies?” asks Ian.

“Again, it's not certain they are . . . those,” I tell him. “They're probably just lost. Maybe this witch woman they mentioned poisoned their food and water, drugged them.”

“In the movies, it's almost always bites.” We turn to PJ, who sits with his ankle in his hand, staring intently into it, his face cast in shadow. “It's spread like a fast-acting virus. If they bite you and don't manage to eat you alive, the bite gets infected, and then it kills you. Soon after that, you come back.”

“You're saying that this mountain had zombies on it before the Pine City Dancers showed up?” Ian asks.

“It makes sense, in a weird way,” says PJ. “It looked like there were more than twelve of them. Maybe those first few who got taken came back as zombies and got to their friends. Kendra, what else does the diary say?”

I fish the sodden journal from my bag and reopen it to Deborah Palmer's testimony. Now that I know her fate, the words come a bit easier:

 

It wasn't long before Bill passed away in our arms. Looking back, I wish we'd figured out a way to get him to the road, made some kind of a sled or backpack to haul him along in, but we were scared and had no idea what to do, so we buried him in the one place that felt safe—the dirt floor of the cellar.

 

“Really?” says Ian, throwing up his arms. “You couldn't have read that
one
paragraph
before we went down into the basement with Bill the zombie?”

“Dude,” says PJ sternly.

Ian snaps his mouth shut and nods. “Right, sorry. What's done is done and all that. Keep reading.”

 

Suddenly, the cabin was no longer our beacon of hope but a morbid prison. Grace and Chelsea said they saw someone peeking into the windows, and more than once we all heard what sounded like footsteps on the roof. We barely got any sleep, lying in a pile by the fireplace. When morning came, a fight broke out over whether to stay put and hope for a rescue or head back into the woods. We finally decided to keep going, if only to be somewhere where poor Bill wasn't. We headed down the slope, determined to make it back home by nightfall. It didn't work, of course—the mountain seemed to be endless, and we walked for miles, until the sun set and we had to set up camp.

That was a couple of days ago, when there were eleven of us left.

There are only three of us—me, Leonard, and Grace. The others have simply vanished—we would bed down at night, and in the morning they'd be gone, leaving some sort of telltale item behind, a hat torn to shreds, a guidebook smeared with mud. This morning, all we found outside of Chelsea's tent were finger marks in the dirt, like she'd clawed at the ground while something dragged her away. We're out of food, and we're too tired to keep walking. Grace won't stop crying. Leonard seems crazy, bursting into bouts of angry laughter, saying he needs to destroy the entire forest, burn it to the ground. He says he's seen some of our friends walking off in the distance, only it's not them, just things that look like them, something inside of their bodies. The forest feels more hostile every day, and the things haunting it, whatever they might be, seem to be closing in.

If you're reading this, there may be hope for you yet. You need to find a way out of this horrible wilderness. The old woman we chased from her cabin might still be out there. If you can find her, force her to lead you back, and tell the outside world our story.

My hand aches from writing this, and my pencil is a tiny stub. Grace says she hears something. The sun is going down, and I have to help prepare the bonfire for

 

“For?” asks PJ.

“That's all she wrote,” I tell him.

We sit in silence, shudders coursing up and down my spine. Dealing with Ian and PJ has been tough enough, but fighting with a dozen of your friends while trying to outrun something you can't see . . . it must have been brutal on her.

This poor, frightened woman. These poor lost souls.

Still, a nagging confusion buzzes in the back of my mind. Where could this witch woman have gotten to? If Deborah got attacked out in the woods while writing this journal, how did it end up in the basement of the cabin, sitting next to that skull? None of this makes sense yet. There's something here that none of us is seeing.

“Anything else?” says Ian, catching me off guard. He stands behind me, staring down at the diary in my hands. “Maybe there's another clue, something about getting us out of here or destroying the zombies.”

“No,” I tell him, “just the diary.”

“Are you sure?” asks Ian. “Keep looking. See if there's anything else about this old mountain woman.”

I flip a few pages forward, blank, blank, blank, and then—

“Whoa,” says Ian, pointing to the next written page. “That's different.”

PJ sidles over and peers at the paper. “What do you think this is supposed to be?”

“I'm . . . unsure,” I reply.

The next few pages of the book appear to be written by a different author, someone less hurried. There's a drawing, a detailed sketch of a dream catcher, one of the circular nets used by the Native Americans to capture good dreams, though this one looks like it was made to lure in night terrors. The strings running through it form a shape not unlike the one painted on the stone wall, and among them are sewn in what appear to be teeth. All around it is a series of strange, foreign symbols that could be Arabic or Cyrillic, but are definitely not from any alphabet I know.

Something about this part of the diary sends a vibration up through my body. The script, the drawings, they're all done by a surer author than the scribbled confession of the Pine City dancer; and like the wall and the woods and the cabin, there's a feeling of
wrong
that goes along with them, a sort of . . .
inauspicious
association (four, a bit of a stretch, though).