Gravediggers (21 page)

“Kyra, sweetie, leave your brother alone,” scolds PJ's mother.

“It's okay, I asked her to,” rasps PJ. Next to his bed, PJ's sister is tightening two joints on a tripod holding up a camcorder. She smiles at us, her eyes large and bright but very sad.

“Hey, dude,” says Ian hoarsely. “Hear you're feeling better.”

“Oh yeah,” says PJ, rolling his eyes with some effort. “Never better—” He lets out two deep, hacking coughs; his one hand goes to his mouth. The other, I notice, stays jammed firmly beneath the covers. After he calms down, he looks at his mom and says, “Could I talk to these guys alone for a second?”

“Sure,” says his mom, overeager. “Come on, Kyra, PJ wants to hang out with his friends.”

“I want to stay,” she says, suddenly looking skittish and terrified.

“Go with Mom, just for a second,” he says to her. Kyra nods and follows her mother out of the room. Once the door is closed behind us, I go to speak to PJ, but he holds up his hands as though to halt me . . . and my stomach cramps. My pulse quickens. It is as though hope has become a ridiculous concept.

The bite is a deep, infected black color, dry but still shining with a fresh coat of some foul liquid. From its edges creeps a web of black veins. His fingernails have turned a deep, bluish gray.

“They're gone,” he says a little loudly. PJ's closet opens, and O'Dea reveals herself from between the racks of nice shirts and Christmas outfits. She also looks exhausted—eyes bloodshot, face even more wrinkled than usual. According to PJ's emails, she's been visiting him almost every night, and I do not wish to think about where she's been sleeping.

“This is sick,” she says to PJ.

“Just turn the camera on,” he says.

“What's happening here?” I ask as O'Dea crosses the room and presses a button on the camcorder. “PJ, what are you doing?”

“I'm going to film it,” he croaks out, pointing to the camera. “When I change. I want to get it on camera, so we can know how it looks. It's the perfect ending.” He goes into another coughing fit again, the sounds coming out from deep in his chest.

“But . . . but wait, man, you're feeling better!” says Ian, looking furious. “Your mom just said—”

“Lying,” says PJ, shaking his head. “I've just been holding on for today. I'm going tonight.”

The words sink into the room, taking the place of anything else that can be said. We stare at our friend, who looks back at us with a gaze of calm resignation. O'Dea will not make eye contact with him, staring at the ground and repressing a grimace. None of us wanted to know what PJ just told us, and yet somehow, he's been aware all day. All of our hoping and praying, all of O'Dea's magic spells, they didn't mean anything.

PJ's about to go. To leave us, his room, this mortal coil. Tonight.

And then, he's going to come back.

“PJ, we can't,” says Ian gravely. “O'Dea's right; it's too much.”

“You don't understand,” he gasps, holding out a rolled-up sheet of paper wrapped around something solid. When I take it from him, I find a hastily scribbled note covering a small black metal cylinder, with a USB port jutting out of one end.

“What is this?” I ask him.

“Read it,” says PJ. I smooth out the note and read:

 

PJ—If you're reading this, then you found the camera. Yeah, that's right, you had one hidden in your gear. I'm not going to lie; I'm stealing whatever you film. I won't use it in anything, but I wanted to see what happened down there. Good news is I also put a flash drive in your backpack that recorded it all, so you have the footage, too. Hope you can make some cool movies with it. Sorry for sabotaging your gear, but admit it, it's cool that you have a video recording of this.

 

Admit it,

MELEE

 

“I have it all on this hard drive,” he says. “Kudus, Savini, even the mushroom. . . . It's the ultimate zombie movie. And this . . . this is its conclusion.”

Ian and I stare at each other, faces draining of blood.

“What can we do?” I ask, almost to myself more than anyone else.

“You can get in the shot,” says PJ.

Chapter Twenty-one

PJ

N
ot yet. Almost, but not yet. I know. Food. I know.

Around me, my room blurs. My head throbs. My hearing goes fuzzy; one ear just stops working, turning instead into a high-pitched ringing sound that feels as though it's boring its way into my skull, my brain. A cold, searing pain travels from the base of my skull down my backbone.

Please. Please, I'm so close. Not yet. Just this last thing.

“You're good,” says O'Dea in a soft, cracking voice as she peers into the eyepiece of one of the many cameras around me. Have to get all the angles. It's the perfect ending. I'm living my art.

It is so hard to breathe. I pull deeply, fill my lungs to the point of breaking, and speak directly at the black lens hanging before me, the eye of truth peering into the blurred, unsure world around me.

“Hello, my name is Peter Jacob Wilson, and I am a Gravedigger.” Already, there's no air in me. Concentrate. Another deep breath, another sentence. Keep it going. “A Gravedigger is someone who is chosen by the powers that be to fight zombies, undead creatures that rise from the grave due to curses. Dark karma ruins parts of the world, and it wakes the dead. My friends Ian Buckley and Kendra Wright and I first discovered them on a school trip to the mountains of Montana.”

I motion over to Ian and Kendra next to me. They do not look happy about being featured in my grand finale. Ian glances back and forth between the camera and me with openmouthed shock and sadness. And Kendra bears the same squinting frown that O'Dea's been giving me lately. Whether they like it or not, they can feel the infection spreading in me, feel what I am about to become.

“We encountered them again during a vacation we took in Puerto Rico, out on an island called Isla Hambrienta,” I continue through the lightness in my head and chest, “and once more, in an underground city in Indonesia called Kudus. It was during this last trip that I was bitten by one of these reanimated corpses.” I raise my hand to the camera. The bite is black, barely painful. In my vision, it is the only thing in the room that is not blurred; the flesh of the bite and the veins around it seem to stand out, dark and solid, almost casting a shadow out of them that seems to darken the room and reach its hungry fingertips toward my friends. “In the week since it happened, I have been losing health gradually, and tonight, I can feel the infection spreading deeper. I think—I know—that tonight, the change will happen. I will die, and I will become one of these cursed monsters.”

Ian puts a hand over his eyes and grimaces. From beneath it, tears roll down his cheeks. Part of me wants to reach out to him, let him know that I'm okay. This has been a long week for me, and I've thought long and hard on what's about to happen, and I'm ready for it. This is the inevitable.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm not afraid.

A throbbing iciness shoots through me, emanating from my hand and my spine. No time to waste. Have to get it on camera.

“I just wanted to say,” I manage to utter, “that I'm happy with this. I have had incredible adventures and have made the best friends any person could ask for. I've done my job as a Gravedigger, keeping people safe from the darkness and terror that waits for us out there in the world. And if I have any advice to anyone who sees this, it's that it's okay to be scared. There are monsters out there, terrible beings that exist only to spread pain and death and the end of everything that's great about being alive. That's scary. But you can't let the scary things win.”

A sharp flutter, like a strong cold breeze, shoots through me, and I take a long, deep, gasping breath in response. Around me, the room drifts in and out of focus, the blood red and slime green of my movie posters blending and swirling together. A sound like rushing water fills my ears.

“You've gotta keep fighting,” I say, my mouth and the words feeling out of joint. “But that doesn't always mean you have to fight. Sometimes, fighting just means being strong and doing the right thing. Being the person who . . . keeps the darkness from being stronger. When people, when the world, is evil and tries to break you . . . you have to stand in its way.”

My hands tighten on the bedsheets. Someone, many people, call my name.

Finally, there's the fear—not overwhelming and gut-wrenching, but simple, standing in the background. But it's something different, mostly—it's fear with regret, fear that this is it, that the hundreds of thousands of things I want to say to my family and friends, to Kyra and Ian and Kendra and O'Dea and Josefina, they'll never get a chance to come out.

“Be strong,” I say through chattering teeth. “They'll come for you, out of the dark. Don't let them take you. Let them know . . . what you can be.”

As I say those words, my breath leaves my chest in a long, slow exhale, and doesn't come back.

The eye of the camera expands, growing larger and larger until it fills my field of vision and swallows the room in bottomless black.

 

Blackout.

PJ WILSON, 12, dead of a severe case of the zombie bites, falls—no, not falls, sinks, pulled by a steady force that only flows downward. Soon, he loses all sense of up or down, of warmth and the real world, of anything he can feel with any part of his body. This is less shadow or darkness than it is a void of all life—he is not adrift in a world of black, only a complete nothingness, entirely separate from all that he's ever thought was real. There is only silence and stillness and vast open truth.

Around him, things begin to move, rushing through the void and past whatever last remaining understanding of touch he still possesses. These shapes are swift and giant, like mile-long silent fish swimming through waters that encapsulate and flow through him. Some part of him registers that normally he would be deeply disturbed or upset by the sensation, physical or otherwise, of great creatures near him. At this moment, he is entirely without fear, knowing that such emotions are futile in this place on a level he does not entirely understand but in no way doubts.

Then, light, in two lines, meeting at a rough angle.

A door opens in the blackness. As it cracks, the light pouring out of it is blinding at first, bathing the formlessness on all sides of PJ in its harsh glare, until he can see into the door. A FIGURE, average height, skinny and silhouetted, stands at the open portal, one hand on the door's edge as though to keep it held wide. The sides of the creatures moving near PJ are briefly illuminated, revealing huge serpentine coils that retract with a feral cry as they're caught in the light. For a moment, PJ catches something in his peripheral vision—many eyes glittering, teeth gnashing, skeletal designs on soft repellent flesh—before these strange beings dart farther away from him, deeper into this constant void.

PJ drifts over to the door, floating through the darkness as though he's known how to do it all his life.

Close-up on the Figure, its facial features invisible as it's entirely backlit by the pure white light, leaving him bathed in shadow.

 

FIGURE

(deep, confident)

Hello. I'm here for you.

 

PJ

Thank you.

 

The Figure extends a hand. When PJ reaches his hand out, a BITE is visible, throbbing with a dull and sickly reverberation, like heat off concrete. The Figure sees it, turns toward PJ's face.

 

FIGURE

Forgive me. I did not know.

 

PJ

It's all right. I'll go anyway. I am ready.

 

FIGURE

No. You must not yet.

 

PJ

They will take it. They will raise it to walk again. I am finished there.

 

FIGURE

For most, that would be true. But there is something more to you.

 

PJ moves for the door, but the Figure blocks his path. Slowly, tentatively the Figure extends a hand and presses it to PJ's bite, sending a deep sharp sting into him and pushing him backward.

Suddenly, PJ is floating back out into the black current, the door remaining open and stationary in the darkness but its light seeming to travel with him. He ascends, slowly at first and then rapidly, blasting farther and farther up with the light of that open doorway thrusting him like a bubble, yanking him toward the surface in a shriek of burning celestial fire. The creatures from earlier, the massive void beings, howl as he rushes past them, shying away from the blaze that seems to erupt from his very center and pull him insistently toward the surface of oblivion.

Fade in on a bedroom.

 

Everything is mushed together, way out of focus, a swirl of black murky shapes. Then, gradually, blurred forms begin to distinguish themselves from one another. The noises of the world fade in—a girl sobbing, slowly and loudly. The faint hum of a machine.

“We need to do something,” says a voice. Male. Hard.

Ian. It's Ian talking.

The bedroom comes together—my dresser, my posters, my camera on its tripod, O'Dea's scarecrow form standing behind it with her arms crossed.

The sobbing stops.

“Wha—what does that imply?” asks Kendra.

After a pause, Ian says, “We need a knife. An axe, maybe a shovel.”

“Ian, you can't be saying—”

“It's our job,” he snaps. “We can't let him hurt anyone when . . . when it happens. PJ would have wanted it that way. He'd want us to get the change on camera, and then . . . stop it.”

My mind strains at its petrified home. I focus on my heart, willing the warmth therein to pull me awake, but it remains still. Unbeating, immobile. My lungs won't inflate. I am here, but I'm not able to be here, unable to do anything but lie and watch.

“He—he might snap out of it. It might be some kind of coma or catatonic state.”

“Kendra, he's
not breathing
,” says Ian.

“No. You can't. PJ's a friend of ours, we can't—we can't—”

“O'Dea?”

“Do it, Ian,” she whispers. “It's the only way.”

Kendra sobs hard, loud, for all the room to hear. “How can you even think of this, Ian?”

“You think I'm happy about this?” snaps Ian, his voice finally cracking. “You think this is fun? Oh yeah, this is a real ball for me!”

Kendra's sobbing gets deeper, harder. O'Dea whispers for Ian to do it, before he thinks about it.

“Yeah, Kendra, I'm having a blast! What'd I do today? Re-killed my best friend! What a rush! King of the world, Ma!”

No, no, no, hold on.

“Top.”

The room goes dead silent. In front of me, O'Dea's eyes go wide and bright.

“PJ?” asks Ian's voice in a shaky whisper. Suddenly, his face darts in front of mine, his eyes scanning me for recognition. “PJ, man? Did you just say something?”

There. That feeling, that strength. You had it before—grab that. Use it as a rung on a ladder and pull yourself back into your body with it.

“Top of the world,” I say, not even feeling my lips move.

Ian sits back with a start, face going pale. “What?”

“‘
Top of the world, Ma
' is from
White Heat
with Jimmy Cagney,” I ramble suddenly, spilling out words that I can barely even grasp. “‘
King of the world
' is from
Titanic
with Leonardo DiCaprio. You can only use one, even though both scenes involve someone throwing his arms wide open—”

Kendra squeals with joy, clapping her hands to her head. Ian sits back, breathing loudly through an exhausted smile. Then, both leap at me, arms thrust forward to pull me into a hug—

“NO!” I cry, thrusting my hands feebly up in front of me. The two of them stop short.

“PJ? What's wrong?” asks Ian.

And I say it before I can even think about it: “You're food.”

There it is. Out on the table. Both of my friends back off slowly, mouths tightening in grim understanding. O'Dea nods, sadly sure of what's happened.

As they stand away from me, I climb out of bed. It takes some time to stand steadily—it's as though my whole body has gone asleep, every movement a mixture of complete numbness and cold, prickly sensation. Finally, when I stand on my own feet, O'Dea takes a step toward me.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

“Like death warmed over,” I rasp. I hope for a smile from her. I don't get it.

“Do normal zombies ever talk?” asks Ian.

“Never,” says O'Dea. Slowly, carefully, she lifts my bitten hand. “It must have been those awful mutated zombies. That, mixed with the cockroach poultice, my spells . . . maybe they changed the curse somehow. Created a new kind of zombie.”

“Zombie two-point-oh,” I say. “The latest edition.”

“So . . . we don't have to kill him?” asks Ian.

“I don't think you should,” says O'Dea. “The way things have worked themselves out . . . you're all three—Gravedigger, Warden . . . and Zombie—together as one.”

“You don't sound too excited,” I tell her, feeling stiffness in my jaw as I talk.

“Magic works in threes,” says O'Dea, putting a hand to her chin. “And something like this . . . it's unpredictable. Before, these things had rules to them. Gravediggers weren't Wardens. Zombies weren't people. This is new. I'm just . . .” She snorts. “I'm scared.”

“So, what's the next logical step?” says Kendra, her hand never leaving my cold shoulder (har-har).

“Honestly?” says O'Dea, lowering herself nervously into my desk chair. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

The reality sets in. Not alive. Undead. Whatever I am, it's strange and different. Already, I can feel things in my body and heart changing. My spine aches, but in a good sort of way, solid and strong like a tree trunk. My jaw perpetually moves, as though I'm chewing thin air. I am the bump in the night, in my very core.