The Dead (a Lot) Trilogy (Book 2): Wicked Dead Read online

  However, our giggle fit was short-lived. We all stopped when the metallic sound of a megaphone cut through our laughter like a chain saw.

  5

  “PLEASE STAY CALM,” said a gruff, androgynous voice. I couldn’t see who was talking because all of us were huddled down in the van.

  “Is it that Diana woman?” whispered Trina. She leaned forward, her hand gripping the side of my seat.

  “No,” I whispered back. “Diana sounds more like a school librarian or a lady golfer.” Still, whoever it was, she sounded, I don’t know, familiar.

  “Everything will be okay,” said the voice on the megaphone.

  “Crap,” whispered Jimmy. “Do you know who that is?”

  “No. I don’t. Should I?” I turned around and found Jimmy’s red-stubbled face. His eyes looked scared. “What?” I said.

  “It’s that Cheryl lady,” he said. “I’d know that voice anywhere.”

  Cheryl The It. She was one of the people back at Site 37—a tough little ball of muscle and machismo that made me question whether or not she was actually a she. Jimmy had somehow gotten away from her at the McDuffy Estate and let all the people being held captive there free. He had also released a slew of poxers, too. Good in theory—bad in practice.

  “What do we do?”

  “Pizza,” chirped Andrew, and Sanjay started giggling again.

  “Shhh,” whispered Trina. “Sanjay, we can laugh later. We have to be quiet now. Poopy Puppy says so.”

  Good try.

  “No he doesn’t,” said Sanjay. “Poopy Puppy says the helicopter lady is bad.”

  Duh, really? I stared into Prianka’s eyes.

  “Is she?” she said softly.

  “I guess. I thought she got turned into a poxer back at Site 37.”

  Sanjay spoke again.

  “Poopy Puppy says that Trudy Aiken is too much tonnage for the helicopter.”

  “Sanjay,” scolded Prianka, but he was probably right. Not that I knew my helicopters or anything, but it looked like one of those little news copters that can only carry two people. It wasn’t like an Army bird that could handle a dozen military guys.

  Bullseye carefully raised his head and peeked out the window.

  “Someone’s climbing down a rope ladder from the helicopter,” he said. “It’s a lady. No, it’s a guy. No, um, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Cheryl The It,” Jimmy and I both said in unison.

  “That’s not a dude?” asked Bullseye. “Really?”

  Cheryl The It was the first person we met at Site 37. She seemed nice enough, if not a little too G.I. Joe. I could understand Bullseye’s confusion. She was one tough nut.

  “We are such idiots,” said Trina. “The van’s windows are tinted. She can’t see us.” She was right. All the windows were tinted. From the outside, no one could tell we were sitting inside. We all slowly raised our heads and peered out to the middle of the road. Trudy’s red, dye-job hair was billowing in the wake of the chopper blades. Cheryl The It had climbed the rest of the way down a rope ladder that hung from the open side of the chopper, and stood with two feet squarely on the pavement.

  At first, Trudy took a step backward, once she recognized who she was. Good move, lady—too little too late. Cheryl The It then said something which made Trudy practically fall on her like she was a deep-dish special and begin blubbering and babbling. I couldn’t tell what she was saying. All I could think was that she was spilling her guts about who she was traveling with.

  I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I began to panic.

  “Bullseye, give me the gun.”

  “What for?” Prianka snapped at me.

  “Because,” I snapped back. “Because I’m not going to let this happen.”

  “That’s not your call, man,” said Jimmy. “If these people are truly after you and Trina, I don’t think either of you have any business stepping out of this minivan. You’re too important.”

  “We’re all important,” I said. “And that’s not your call.”

  Something was happening outside. Cheryl The It was holding a piece of paper in her hand and showing it to Trudy. I couldn’t see what it was, but I could guess.

  When my parents were held captive at Site 37, Diana had taken a picture from my mom’s wallet. It was a shot of our family on the beach from when Trina and I were kids. It had our names on the back of it.

  I think she was showing Trudy a copy.

  “We’re screwed.” I whispered under my breath. Not that I knew Trudy well enough to call her a dirty snitch—she just seemed a Hershey bar away from pivoting around on her hippo heels, pointing to the minivan, and ratting us out.

  “Bullseye,” I said again. “The gun.”

  He cradled the pistol in his lap, not knowing what to do.

  “Give it to me,” said Prianka.

  He looked at her with scared eyes, then back to the small handgun in his lap. He had done a lot of damage with that gun in the past week. He had shot a man who had hung himself in a sporting goods store. He hobbled more than a few poxers, and just now he had put a bullet in Tattoo Guy’s leg and the poxer bus driver.

  Bullseye picked up the hand gun like it was a dead rat he found in a dark corner and handed it over to Prianka. His eyes darted nervously back and forth between the two of us.

  “And what are you going to do with that?” I barked at her.

  “What you’re not,” she said, meaning every word of it. The ice queen returned. Her frigid stare almost scared me.

  We were all so intent on what was going on inside the car that we ignored Trudy. Her horrific screams were what brought us back to reality.

  “No,” she wailed. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”

  Cheryl The It was doing the unthinkable. We all turned to see her pulling herself back up the rope ladder and into the open side of the helicopter. Trudy grabbed at the bottom of the rope and tried to put her pudgy foot in the lowest rung, but kept missing. The helicopter’s tail lifted up and it continued on down the road the way we had come.

  None of us could believe it. One minute we were dead meat, the next, the helicopter was gone.

  Prianka put the handgun down on the dashboard and opened her door. We opened ours too, and soon we were all surrounding Trudy in the middle of the road.

  “What did she want?” asked Trina.

  Trudy looked at her feet.

  “It’s important,” I said.

  “She didn’t want me anymore,” she sobbed.

  “That’s a good thing,” said Jimmy.

  “I suppose,” she sniffed through tears. Then she turned to me and Trina. “She wants the two of you—only the two of you.” Her face scrunched up into a teary mess. She took a deep breath and let it out for a long time. “But I told her you went south with your family and I was traveling back home to Ashburnham to find my own.”

  “And she bought it?”

  Trudy nodded her head.

  “So much for pizza,” she sobbed.

  “Pizza is bad for your heart,” said Sanjay. “Poopy Puppy says so and Andrew and Newfie agree.”

  “That’s what I told myself,” said Trudy Aiken. “You know what? I’ve never been able to stick to a diet in my life, but this isn’t about me anymore. It’s about our future.” Trudy reached out and hugged Trina and me fiercely. “You two are our future,” she said. “I’ll take that over a double pepperoni with cheese any day.”

  “I . . . I . . . I want a pizza,” cackled Andrew as he perched on Sanjay’s shoulders.

  We all laughed until we cried.

  6

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Trina and Bullseye were syphoning gas out of the disabled bus in the woods while Jimmy was giving Krystal wheelchair rides complete with wheelies and twirls. Sanjay was with Andrew. He was sitting next to the minivan, cross-legged, with Poopy Puppy in his lap, leafing through a small stack of books he insisted on taking from Aunt Ella’s house.

  “Andrew says we need them,” he told us. “N
ewfie, too.”

  I didn’t want to ask why. They were all occult books with folk spells from around the world, methods for talking to spirits, astral projection, and psychic healing—a whole big load of hooey, if you ask me. So, while everyone seemed occupied, Prianka and I stole away to the far side of the bus.

  I didn’t know what it was about my former nemesis, but I couldn’t stop kissing her. She tasted better than whatever pizza Trudy Aiken could dream up, but in mid-kiss, she pulled away from me.

  “Just because I’ve had a few momentary lapses in judgment regarding our lips doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “What was that all about with Bullseye’s gun?”

  Uh oh—the temperature dropped 50 degrees. There was the old Prianka again.

  “Um . . . ”

  “Yeah, um. This isn’t the Tripp Light show, you know. It’s not all about you.”

  Okay, maybe there was a switch behind her left ear or on her arm that I accidently brushed and flipped her into the Prianka-nator.

  “Well I can ask you the same question,” I said. “What was all that about Bullseye’s gun?”

  I think the air around the two of us got even chillier. Prianka’s eyes burned fiercely and her lip curled. I thought she was going to punch me like she did in Mrs. Schlerman’s seventh grade English class when I got 101 on a quiz and she only got a 97. The quiz was on a short story about a kid who prays to a ferret that lives under his guardian’s tool shed. I laughed at her because the story took place in India.

  Bad move—really bad move.

  Prianka gritted her teeth.

  “Badirchand,” she hissed under her breath and stomped away, leaving me wondering what just happened.

  For like the hundredth time in the past few days, I found myself wishing that someone would drop a rulebook on my head about boy-girl interrelations. That, and a Hindi translator. It would make dating Prianka Patel so much easier.

  Newfie came around the front of the bus and lumbered up to me, his dark, dull eyes looking into mine.

  “What? You want to get pissed off at me, too? Come on, Bigfoot. Bring it.” He jumped up and put his giant paws on my shoulders, and slobbered dog goo all over me. I knew it was just his way of telling me that everything was cool, but did he have to be so gross about it? I let him get in a couple good drools before pushing him off and drying my face with my sleeve.

  Prianka had stomped down to the other bus, so I walked over to the minivan where Sanjay was sitting, flipping through pages of an oversized paperback. I didn’t see the cover, but I’m sure he was reading about summoning demons or something equally bizarre.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said.

  “Hey, buddy,” he echoed.

  “Hey, buddy,” chirped Andrew.

  “Um, Sanjay,” I said. “What does ‘badirchand’ mean?”

  Sanjay stopped flipping through the pages of the book and covered his mouth with both hands. His eyes grew wide. Okay, I get it. She told me off in Hindi. His shoulders started moving up and down. Great—just great.

  “Idiot,” he twittered softly through his fingers. He moved his hands from his face and said it again, louder this time. “Poopy Puppy says idiot. Idiot means badirchand. Badirchand means idiot. Idiot idiot idiot idiot idiot.”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. Enough.”

  Sanjay continued giggling.

  “Idiot,” he said once more. That was just about enough for me. I left him sitting there with that stupid bird and his dumb doll, and trudged past the minivan about a hundred yards or so. There were a couple of Newfie-sized rocks off the embankment. I sat down on one and got lost in my own broody thoughts.

  It seemed like everything I did for the past week had been totally focused on finding my parents. Well, I did all that. Story over. I got the girl, saved the day, and rode off into the sunset in a minivan. The sad thing was my story was far from over. In fact, I think it was just starting, and any way I looked at it, things pretty much sucked. Not only was I running from the dead, I was running from the living, and who knew if I was ever going to be able to stop.

  After a while, Aunt Ella came up from the woods and saw me sitting off by myself. She stood there watching me. I knew she was there, but I pretended like she wasn’t. My aunt was about the last person I wanted to face one-on-one right then. Ever since she drove the bus through the wall at Site 37, we had all been caught up in a whirlwind of insanity. We hadn’t had a chance to chill, and we hadn’t really had a chance to talk, either. You know, just the two of us.

  I think we both knew we had to, sooner or later.

  She slowly walked down the road, taking her time to look at the brightly colored leaves. I knew she was stalling. When she did finally reach me, she plopped herself down on the boulder to my right.

  We were quiet for a while, shoulders hunched, staring at the gravel at our feet. I was never really close to Aunt Ella or Uncle Don. I knew my parents thought they were a little weird—and trust me they were—but somehow, everything that happened since last Friday night sort of erased all that.

  “I’m sorry about Uncle Don,” I finally said, staring down at my lap and the watch that I had taken from his dresser and put on my wrist.

  “He was a good guy,” she said. “The best. But we all have our time on this earth—just some of us less than others.” She clasped her hands together and basked in the quiet. Aunt Ella had big round glasses with thick lenses that somehow made her eyes look smaller than they actually were. Her tangled mess of dark hair was tied into a sloppy knot on the top of her head and held together with what looked like chopsticks. I don’t think I ever saw Aunt Ella not wearing a purple shirt. It was her thing—a purple shirt with jeans or sometimes even green sweat pants.

  When she spoke again, she surprised me. “You were very brave to do what you did.”

  “We needed the gas.”

  “No. That’s not what I meant.”

  Sometimes I can be a big fat badirchand. It took me a moment to understand what she was driving at. When I did, a lump formed in my throat. “You mean what I did to Uncle Don.”

  That day when we pulled into Aunt Ella and Uncle Don’s farm, and I saw the dead thing that was my uncle standing in the pasture, I guess I lost it. He was the first person in my family to be turned, and it was just so unfair. I thought lighting him up was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to see him looking like a monster, and I didn’t want Trina to see him, either.

  It never occurred to me that maybe Aunt Ella did.

  She looked away. I couldn’t imagine how she felt. Thinking of my parents or Trina, or, well, Prianka, as a poxer made me almost sick to my stomach, and I figured Aunt Ella was just as sick. And sad. But she was wrong about me. I wasn’t brave. I killed so many poxers over the past week that in simple numbers I was a mass murderer. Uncle Don was one of those monsters—just another notch on my belt.

  Then to top it all off, I stole his watch.

  For the first time since I took it, the watch felt wrong on my hand. I reached down and pulled it off my wrist.

  “Here,” I said. “I shouldn’t be wearing this. It belongs to you.”

  Aunt Ella took the watch from me and held it in her open palm. That stupid watch was all that was left of him—a dumb little twist of metal and leather, probably manufactured some place far away by people who made two dollars a week. Aunt Ella closed her hand around it and looked at me.

  “My dear nephew,” she said. “I think if anyone has earned the right to wear this watch, it’s you. I have a million memories of Don Dark that will be with me until the day I die. The most honorable memory that you have of your uncle is how you gave him the gift of a merciful death. Never think you did any less than that. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

  “Well, technically you didn’t know about poxer pyrotechnics.”

  “True,” she said, “but even if I did, I’m not sure I could have been that strong.” She bounc
ed the watch in her palm for a moment before handing it back to me. “Here,” she said. “He would have wanted you to have this.”

  I smiled at her and slipped the watch back on my wrist.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’ll be my good luck charm.”

  I saw a dark cloud pass over her face, and I knew what she was thinking. She might as well have stood on the boulder, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted it out for everyone to hear.

  You’re gonna need it. That’s what she was thinking. You’re gonna need all the good luck you can get.

  7

  ABOUT TEN MINUTES down the road we saw a small sign that said ‘Swifty’s Country Store’, with an arrow pointing right. Aunt Ella turned the school bus and followed the sign.

  “Sounds like a happening place,” I joked.

  No one said anything. Ever since we left Greenfield, we had been following back roads and staying away from the populated areas, which wasn’t that hard to do. Who knew Massachusetts was so dead?

  Ba dum dum.

  “Where are we?” said Trina, vaguely annoyed.

  “Lost,” muttered Prianka.

  Trina pulled the road atlas out of the door pocket and handed it to Sanjay. “Sanjay, where are we on this map?” You had to ask him things directly—that’s just the way he operated. He took it from her and rapidly flipped through the pages, occasionally stopping and closing his eyes.

  “I think you have to give him a quarter, too,” I said. Daggers shot out of Prianka’s eyes and practically skewered me on the spot. “Um—or not.”

  We waited patiently for Sanjay to answer as we followed the bus down a bumpy road with the fall foliage hanging over us on both sides. The woods were dense and thick—almost like you needed a machete to hack through the stuff.

  Places like this made me wonder why there was always so much talk about how humans have encroached on nature so much that there is no space left for wildlife to go. Oh yeah? Come to Western Massachusetts some time. We got all the space you need.

  Finally, Sanjay pulled Poopy Puppy up to his ear and slowly nodded his head.