Gravediggers (4 page)

Kendra's fingers fly across the keyboard. “Indonesian!” she says. “It means
holy
.”

“Can you get us there?” I ask.

Ian's and Kendra's eyes flicker up to me. “Dude,” says Danny, “Indonesia? Do you know where Indonesia is on a map? No offense, but I bet you don't. Besides, if the little I remember is true, this is one of the more cursed places of, say, all time. You guys might have to bail on this one—”

No. I can't back down. I can't let this happen. “Can you get us to Kudus, Danny?”

After a moment where he obviously considers our sanity, Danny Melee sighs. “When do you need to go?”

“Immediately,” says Kendra.

Danny nods. “Let me make some calls and I'll get back to you,” he says. “No promises.” He reaches a hand out, but then stops and glares hard into the screen. “And for the record, Kendra? You may have gotten my attention, but PJ reached me.” Then, with a click, the monitor goes dark.

 

T
hat night, we sleep over at Kendra's house, the girls in Kendra's room, Ian and me in the guest room. While I call home to say good night to Kyra, Kendra brings up a picture of Indonesia, wondering aloud how we could possibly get there.

For an hour after the lights go out, Ian rants from his air mattress about purpose and O'Dea and how he didn't think Danny Melee would go for it, but I'm barely present. In my mind, Dario Savini drags our Warden and friend kicking and screaming into a city made of skulls to the soulless moans of the dead. In my mind, he grins maniacally as he dangles her, hog-tied, over a slobbering mass of hollow-eyed corpses. This is the problem with being so into scary movies—you can vividly imagine the most awful things possible, in dramatic Technicolor with Dick Smith doing makeup.

Two hours pass after Ian's rambling dies down into soft snores, and I still can't get to sleep. Finally, I crawl out of bed and tiptoe through the darkened house into the kitchen. The fridge is full of fancy organic food and foreign-brand drinks, and I finally settle on some Georgian mineral water, which is actually not that bad—

“It will happen there.”

My heart punches me in the rib cage and my every joint tightens at once, sending a spatter of sparkling water flying out of my glass and onto the counter. When I turn, Josefina, in a pair of Kendra's pajamas, stares at me. Her arms are wrapped around herself, and her eyes look damp and sad from beneath a veil of her hair.

A million things run through my mind—
You scared me, I couldn't sleep, what are you doing up, so this Josie business
—but what comes to my mouth first is what I really want to know.

“What will happen?” I ask.

“That isn't clear to me yet,” she says. “The dreams are still just flashes, images and feelings. There's no order to them. But . . .”

“But what?” I say, doing my best to sound encouraging, the way I talk to my sister.

She gulps, blank eyed. “But there is always the cold, dark place,” she says. “Your friends surround you. They scream, long into the night. And then there is blood—red and thick and terrible.”

My mouth goes dry and I lower the glass to the counter, trying to meditate on my feet, to push back the fear. “And then?”

“And then there's a flash,” she says, “and you are gone. There is only one person there, someone new and frightening. I cannot see their face.”

The concentration methods O'Dea and Josefina taught me are failing—terror tightens my throat, sends sparks down into my fingertips. “What do you think it means?”

“I think it means your destiny lies in that cave,” she says. “But that you might have to deal with a great darkness to find it.”

She walks over to me, pulls me into her arms, and presses her lips to my forehead. “I'm sorry, PJ,” she says through a sob, and then turns and vanishes into the house's shadows, leaving me to measure my breathing, focus on my heart rate, and wonder how I'm ever going to get any sleep tonight.

Chapter Four

Ian

D
anny Melee delivers. I mean, no joke, the guy
comes through
.

“My private jet is going to take you guys to Borneo tonight,” he says over Kendra's smartphone. “That's where it seems all the rumors of Kudus are centered around. Someone'll be by to pick you up around six. On it, there'll be caving gear for the three of you, plus all the research materials I've managed to put together on Kudus. Once you're there, someone's going to meet you and take you on a cave tour. The cave system you'll be visiting as tourists is connected to the caves where we believe the city to be. The guy I'm hiring will wait for you for twenty-four hours, but after that, he leaves and you're on your own in Indonesia, which, honestly, I wouldn't be too jazzed about if I were you. That work?”

The four of us trade oh-my-God looks across Kendra's room, and finally Kendra says, “Yes. This is incredible. Thank you, Danny.”

“Whatever,” says Melee. “Just make sure Dario doesn't do something stupid like release an army of zombies and end the world. I've decided I'm officially against apocalyptic scenarios. Bad for business.”

The first thing that fires off my dome is
Aren't you a saint, Melee
, but I decide to shut up for right now; there's just too much going on, and besides, Danny's doing us a solid here. “We'll stop him,” I say. “Thanks again, man. You're a good dude.”

“Ian, I'm trafficking three underage killers halfway across the globe and dumping them in a cave full of flesh-eating dead people,” snaps Melee. “I'm not a good dude; I'm just out of my mind apparently. Oh, one more thing, guys?”

“What's up?” I ask.

“Never contact me again.” There's a click, and the phone goes dead.

 

A
t this point, one of the hardest parts of this whole Gravediggers thing is making up excuses to tell my folks. Standing in front of them the next afternoon in our kitchen, it's just killing me to keep a straight face, and honestly, given how quickly this has all happened, I won't be surprised if they just don't buy it. My mom's got that look that's somewhere between proud and worried, but my dad, he's the kicker, sitting there with his mustache drooping down, chewing his thoughts.

“But your movie's not done,” he says. “I thought that's why we've had all these kids running around our house in face paint. To shoot this wolfman movie.”

See, in this situation, my gut reaction is to ask him what he means with “
all these kids
.” This is Kendra and PJ, my best friends, who he should know by now, but that's not going to help us. I need to focus, do my part of O'Dea's Gravedigger training. In my head, I picture her face, wrinkled like crazy, glaring at me.
Calm down
, she says.
Look at you, getting all agitated and chasing the first thing you feel
.
Slow it down. Know what you're doing.

“He only sent them a sample of the film and the script,” I say, reciting Kendra's slapped-together excuse. “That's what's won us the award, not the movie.”

“Must be some script if they're flying you to New York City,” he asks.

“We have a sister school there that's hosting us,” I lie. “Ms. Brandt's meeting us at the airport tonight.” Man, even I'm impressed with how well I'm remembering this. I literally almost wrote it on my hand. “It would just be for a couple of days, and everything's already paid for, so it'd be kind of a big deal if I
didn't
go—”

“Wait,” says my old man. He squints, then shakes his head. “Nope. Can't do it. You have a scrimmage Thursday, and Coach Leider told me he's going to try to set up a casual weekend game for you and the guys on Saturday morning. That's too much practice for you to miss.”

“And school,” notes my mom.

“Dad, come on,” I say, trying my hardest not to sound whiny, which would totally just make him more hardcore, thinking I need to be toughened up. “This is a big deal for me, getting sent to New York for something I'm part of. I can miss a little basketball—”

“You've missed plenty of basketball with this movie nonsense already,” he says. “You can't just be good at a sport, Ian. You need to work at it.”

It'd be so easy, just to spill the beans all over the kitchen floor, that my friend's life depends on this, that there's a man who is trying to release a couple thousand living dead people into the world, that I
am
“just good at” something and it's whackin' zombies upside the head, but none of that's going to get me to Indonesia. What'd O'Dea say to me?
You're like a gun, Ian, always ready to go off; you just need to be pointed the right way to do your job.
“I'll do suicides on the plane, I promise.”

“Ian, you agreed to be on a team,” he says. “You can't go back on it just because you won some weird prize.”

Nah, none of it's working. That hot anger seeps through the cracks of my whole story, and I run my mouth: “These days, it's like
you
agreed to be on the team,” I tell him. “I'm just the one who has to do all the running.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” he snaps.

“Okay, guys,” says my mom, “let's keep this reasonable.”

“Ian, what's gotten into you?” says my dad, just totally ignoring her. “You're upset you're not allowed to play school sports, and then when they let you back on the team, you'd rather fly off with your weird friends!”

“They're not my
weird friends
,” I yell, “they're just my
friends
! They're more important to me than anyone on the team!”

“Exactly my point!” says my dad with this little laugh, like he's laughing
at
me, like he thinks I'm some kind of
idiot
. “No one's going to want you as starting point guard or team captain if you don't show up for practice! Your coach, your team, they
depend
on you to be there! That's important!”

“Maybe some things are more important to me right now,” I tell him, feeling my fists clench and my forehead get a sweat going. Gotta stay focused, point myself in the right direction, blah blah Gravedigger blah.

My dad shakes his head and waves a hand at me, like he's brushing me away like some bug. “You're talking crazy. Obviously, you're in no state to be traveling anywhere.”

“Vince,” says my mom.

“Emily, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's forgotten who he is.”

And no, oh no, it's too easy, he set himself up for it, and listen to him, calling me crazy,
driving
me crazy is more like it. I can't stop myself: “Apparently, I forgot who you are, too,” I spit out, “a real
jerk
.”

He's on his feet faster than I could've ever planned, sending me back a couple of steps as he jabs a finger out toward the stairs. “Room,” he yells. “Now. While you're there, email your friends and tell them you're grounded.”

My mom calls my name out after me, but by the time she's done, I've slammed the door behind me and I'm in my room, just charging back and forth, feeling like there's exhaust coming out of my nose, like I could just punch my wall and watch the whole side of the house come flying off, that's how angry I am. The clock says five, my gym bag's loaded with clothes on my bed, and here I am, grounded, stuck in my room while the whole reason I'm around is going to be waiting outside in no time and I won't be able to go out and meet them. All because my dad thinks that me playing sports, being the kid he wants me to be, is the most important thing in the world.

O'Dea's advice about pointing my energy keeps coming into the back of my head, so I just start doing push-ups and crunches, trying to burn off some steam and do something,
anything
, with all of this anger I've got running through me like a hand made of fire grabbing me by the heart and shaking me back and forth, over and over.

Time flies when you're ticked off, and midway through my third round of looking in the mirror and telling my dad what he can do with his basketball team, I get a text from Kendra.

Outside in 5. Ready
?

My fingers go to the keys of my phone—still some clamshell; Mom says I don't need “another screen”—and begin to type that I can't, I'm grounded, my pops won't let me because of his stupid rules, sorry to leave you guys stranded where I can see you right outside my door—

My fingers freeze as the idea hits me. And man, does it hit hard.

There's my window. There's a, what does Mom call it, a
trellis
outside of my window? Rules aren't, like, physical things, so nothing's actually keeping me here.

Out the window, the night air is super cold, but maybe that's just how nervous I am looking down. My duffel hits the bushes in our backyard with a little crashing noise that I'm
sure
will get me noticed, but thankfully it doesn't. Then, it's one inch at a time, hooking my hands and feet into the shallow diamond-shaped holes in the wood of the trellis. Every second I move down, I'm sure I'm going to put my foot through a piece of wood or the whole thing's going to lean away from the wall and I'm going to go right backwards, but somehow it holds, and I drop the last five feet into the bushes, grab my duffel, and
motor
, just
sprint
.

My luck must be good, because just as I'm coming around the front of my house, a stretch limo rolls up. The back door opens, and PJ's grinning face grows big as I launch toward it.

“I know we've got bigger worries, but there's a TV back h—” PJ yelps, and sits back as I launch myself into the limo, Kendra peering at me as I sprawl out on the floor.

“Drive!” I yell at the confused-looking chauffeur glancing at us in the rearview.

PJ shrugs and slams the door, and the limo goes shrieking off just as, through the window, I catch my dad throwing open our front door and my mom pressing a hand against her chest. Dad yells and screams my name as we speed off around a corner and out of sight.

Kendra squints, confused, but PJ gets it immediately, and smiles in that sad sort of way. “Ah geez, Ian,” he says. “Guess they didn't buy the story, huh.”

“You
snuck out
?” gasps Kendra.

For a little while, I can't say anything; I'm just stuck catching my breath and waiting for my heart to slow down, but then all I can do is replay that last image in my head—not my dad at the door, but my mom, mouth open, looking stunned. Slowly, my hand fumbles my phone out of my pocket, and I send a text to her cell:

im sorry

Thirty seconds later, it vibrates.

Me too.

“You going to be okay?” asks PJ.

“Let's just get to Borneo,” I tell him, feeling like my heart just ate something bad.

 

M
y fingertips run over the little rubber bumps on the ball, and I can really feel every single one of them as I charge down the court. All of the other players are dead as disco, green-skinned corpses with white eyes and black, chewing mouths, wearing ripped-up uniforms, who come at me with their hands straight out, the worst defense ever. My dad and O'Dea are in the stands, screaming at me to focus and work and give it my all, but then O'Dea's face turns all swollen and bloody and my dad becomes Dario Savini, laughing at me. I go in for a layup, and then
whoa
, the whole court jerks sideways and I sit up.

After a few seconds of blinking and shaking my head back and forth, my body tells me that the world is tilting, that everything is shaking. The dark metal tube of Danny Melee's private jet lies before me, shuddering with turbulence.

Slowly, the picture comes together—PJ across the row from me, asleep and wrapped in a blanket, the other seats lined up in front of us, each with enough legroom for an extra person to lie down in . . . and there, up at the front of the plane near the passage to the cockpit, a light. Once the shaking of the plane gets a little less intense, I unbuckle my seat belt and shuffle forward.

“Can't sleep?” says Kendra as I come up behind her. She's in a little circle of seats with a polished wooden table in the middle of it, and it's covered with old maps that are brown around the edges, big dusty-looking books, and computer printouts. Her laptop sits open by her side, glowing with even more information.

“Yeah,” I say, taking a seat across from her. “Just a little shaken by everything that's happened, I guess.”

“That's totally understandable,” she says, still not looking up from her research. “We've been thrust into this situation swiftly, unlike the mountain, or the island.”

“You think it's all going to be like this from now on?” I ask. “Just nonstop Gravedigger-ing, no warning whatsoever?”

She finally stops reading, and looks up, not really at me but kind of past me, at what's in her head. She blinks, and thinks. And it's funny, 'cause that used to really get to me, when she did that. I'd just want to shake her and shout, “JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY, QUEEN BRAIN,” but these days it's maybe the most incredible thing about her, how she can stop and take everything into account and think. How she does it is beyond me, but it's so cool.
She
'
s
so cool, in her own weird, nerdy, psycho way.

“I think we might be in the middle of something,” she says. “Meeting O'Dea, dealing with Dario Savini, these seem like pieces leading toward an end. At this time, I'm just following them.”

Again, so smart. Makes so much sense. “What do you think is going to happen?”

She shrugs and smiles. “That, I can't tell you. I'm just the brains.”