Gravediggers (8 page)

“What's her problem?” I whisper to PJ. “
Not a tool?
We're all tools. Zombie-hunting tools.”

“That's a little creepy, man,” says PJ, and when I look at him he's kind of shaking his head, like he can't believe what I'm saying.

“Isn't that what O'Dea wants us to be? Trained zombie killers?”

“But we're people first,” he says. “Kendra's your friend, not a weapon. Whatever's going on with her, she's having a hard time with it. You need to just let her deal with things at her own pace.”

“Easy for you to say,” I tell him. “You're all Zen about Gravedigger-ing these days. If you were smart, you'd be scared. You'd want to use every strategy available to you.”

“Trust me, Ian,” he says, trotting off after Kendra, “I'm very scared.”

Great, so now I'm the jerk, and for once I'm the guy being left behind instead of forging ahead, which is a feeling I'm not that big a fan of, let me just say. As I power walk to catch up with the two lights ahead of me bobbing in the darkness, I just keep wondering why I'm the only one having the normal reaction to this. Dad would get it. Coach would get it. Why pull punches? Why do I stay the good old-fashioned zombie fighter while Kendra gets to witch out and PJ's some born-again mercy killer or something? What's the big deal with wanting to do what we came here to do?

Chapter Eight

Kendra

T
he cave is like outer space—the darkness is oppressive, all-encompassing, and carries with it a deep and lonely cold. Or so I think. As we descend farther into the cave, I cannot help but wonder what is making me feel so isolated and outcast. Is it our current situation, or Ian's awful comments that have my cheeks burning and my fists clenching?

It's not as though I disliked things the way they were before.

If I had my way, these unsettling developments—O'Dea kidnapped and dragged to a sunless crevice where she might kill herself rather than divulge the tools of her trade, a new breed of inhuman zombie that behaves like a skilled predator, my emerging talents for an energy conveyance that some might call
magic
—would not be happening. O'Dea would be giving us phone tutorials, the zombies would be slow and unintelligent, and I would be nothing more than a karmically destined zombie killer. And, of course, Ian wouldn't be acting so awkwardly around me, alternating between reverent and aggressive.

Three more years. All I needed was three years of learning, training, understanding what we are. We'd be teenagers, ready to deal with an abundance of displacement and change in our daily lives, not only in our karmic standing. Instead, we're shoved into this our first year, belaying down a centuries-old abyss to a sunken city filled with mutated corpses.

And don't forget the powers, Kendra
.
You saved your friends' lives earlier with that Warden trick, but you left no room for speculation. You've got a power beyond that of mortal human beings (be honest; somehow you always knew), and you used it to get those zombies away from you.

Remembering the feeling of those strong, dead hands clawing at my flesh sends a chill down my spine. But it's not simply their new forms, their new abilities . . . it's what these cave zombies
didn't
do. Everything observes a set of rules within this world of karma and curses, and one seems to be that zombies devour human flesh. Danny Melee once speculated it was to allow the fungus that reanimates them to spread, but whatever the reason, it's consistently been the case that the zombies eat the living.

So why didn't these zombies bite us? They had plenty of time to do so, yet they never did. It makes no sense. None of this does. What
happened
down here?

The sigils on the wall, both those carved by hand and those glowing softly in my vision that must have been enchanted through witchcraft (if O'Dea is still alive, ask her if that term is considered offensive or insensitive), scream at me in some kind of hidden electrical dialect that feels slightly painful. But to some extent, Ian is right—I've got to try and make sense of their message. If we're going to save O'Dea, we need to do so any way we can. Whether or not we're “tools,” as he so idiotically put it.

My heart beating fast, my mind racing, I close my eyes and put my hand to the wall, drinking in its strange empathic—

DOOM PAIN DEATH BLOOD CHAOS

My hand flies back, my mind stunned by the blast of discord that swept over it. Ian and PJ stop in their tracks as my gasp bounces between the darkened walls, filling the dusty silence. “I'm fine,” I stutter, trying to blink the dots of light out of my vision. And yet, as they start walking again—PJ quicker than Ian—I feel the loss of that new and somewhat harsh power, which was both shocking and thrilling.

Easy, Kendra. Don't rush into this. Tiny steps. Try again.

Mentally, I focus on O'Dea's lessons, her calm growled words on escaping my own brain and letting go. As my hand approaches the wall, I take several deep breaths, doing my best to put all extraneous thoughts from my mind. As my hand collides with the sigils, the energy flows freely through me, filling me. But rather than clashing with my active cerebellum, it finds an empty space to burn out its dark, ancient message.

 

B
efore the warriors came, the wall explains in a blooming of raw data, Kudus was known as a heaven on earth.

Great thinkers, artists, and wise men from all over the island, and from many lands a great ways away, came to Kudus to learn under its many brilliant citizens. Pilgrimages to Kudus were seen as a necessary rite for any monk or mystic, and peace, harmony, and freedom were the governing principles within its walls.

For ages, the warriors, the great headhunter tribes of the island, had a fine relationship with the city's strange residents, trading furs and meat for medicine and spiritual guidance. Though brutal and cruel, the king of the warriors saw the good that the people of the city brought to the land and made a law that the city was to go undisturbed. But the king died during battle with a neighboring tribe, and his son, a vicious killer and inhuman monster, took over. Immediately, he demanded better trades, began to question the importance of the city, and more than once threatened the city elders during a bargain. Unlike his father, he would come in full war paint when entering the city, complete with enemy heads around his neck or on his spear. Finally, the people of Kudus cut the headhunters off, forbidding them from entering the city and forbidding its citizens to do business with the warrior tribe.

One week after the decree was made, the warriors attacked. The guards of the city walls were no match for them; the weapons they bore were sold to them by the very warriors they fought, and they were not well trained in handling them, given their environment. Within minutes, the walls had been breached, and the headhunters entered the city. Though the warriors were greatly outnumbered by the citizens of Kudus, the thoughtful and generous citizens were easy pickings for the skilled soldiers. What followed was horror—slaughter in the streets, blood sacrifices, temples burned, countless heads lopped off and carried as trophies through the city. For miles in every direction, the screams of the dying could be heard filling the night.

 

M
y feet slow, my breath catches in my chest, and tears burn the backs of my eyes. No voice speaks to me of this horrible killing—it is transmitted directly into my heart. The fear of the citizens, the bloodlust of the headhunters, the sickening smell of carnage, the agony of a city dying in one unspeakable night.

“Kendra?” whispers PJ. His hand lands softly on my shoulder. “You all right?”

“What's the holdup?” asks Ian, trundling up behind us.

“Kendra just needs a second,” says PJ, thankfully saying what I wish I wasn't too emotionally compromised to express. “But she's fine. Right?”

“Right,” I manage to utter.

“You feeling sick still?” says Ian. His hand takes mine and puts a water bottle into it. “Here, if you want it. Not too much, though; we only have a little.”

The simple action makes me feel somewhat better about Ian. He helps when he can. The water is good, washes the taste of my post-magic regurgitation out of my mouth, centers me. “Perfect,” I whisper. “Thanks. We can continue.”

The boys quietly walk off ahead of me. My hand attempts to touch the wall again, but it hovers an inch above the dusty surface. The cold, overwhelming darkness of the cave feels safer than the ravaged horror of Kudus.

But I have to know. It could help us find the city . . . and O'Dea.

Closing my eyes, I move a few inches down the line of hieroglyphics, hoping to miss any further slaughter, and press my hand to the wall. The energies fill me once more, pouring their story behind my eyes. . . .

 

T
he sacking of Kudus was spoken of through all the land, causing much sorrow and agony. And while some cried out against the tribe that would so willingly butcher a peaceful city of freethinkers, other tribal leaders respected the viciousness of the headhunters. They had been suspicious that the people of Kudus practiced black magic and consorted with demons. Many local tribes made their way to the city, ready to ransack what loot the warriors had left behind.

The tribesmen who made it back spoke of the dead.

Those people of Kudus who had not lost their heads had risen and were devouring any living person, pilgrim or bandit, who made their way to the city. Soon, some of the dead began escaping and wandering the countryside, seeking warm flesh and hot blood. The warrior tribe who had destroyed the city vowed to do it a second time and marched proudly into battle with spears held high and war cries on their voices.

That night, the people of Kudus had their revenge. The headhunters were overwhelmed by their lifeless adversaries and fell. Of the hundreds of headhunters who entered the city, only two made it out, and they were gibbering madmen for the rest of their days, haunted by visions of the living dead.

Defeated physically, the tribesmen brought together every sorcerer and priest they could find and had them use their magic to cleanse the city. The dead came, and in a last effort to free the land of the scourge, the gathered mages used their power to cause a massive earthquake that split the mountain in a great jagged vent that swallowed up the entire city. Many lost their lives using their magic to create the quake, but when they finished, the city and its thousands of undead monsters sat a mile below the surface of the earth. In an act of bravery, a team of powerful Wardens made their way down through the caves and into Kudus to lay the final containment spells onto the city, to ensure that it could never escape. The last of the mages, a woman named Yanta, completed one last task over twenty years of sunless living and dodging the cursed. Her last act as Warden of these caves was to carve . . .

 

“. . . this staircase.”

“What was that?” asks PJ, looking back at me.

“What?” I ask.

“What about this staircase?”

My stomach sinks. I'd been so good about taking in the story of the city without mumbling it out loud, and here I am revealing my bizarre magical powers at the last minute. “Nothing,” I say. “Just had a thought, about the city. I'm thinking we might be getting close.”

PJ nods, but doesn't say anything. No one, not even myself, is interested as to how I might know it is close.

The answer's the same, Kendra. Because you feel it. Because a new sense of which you were previously unaware, somehow simply
knows.

We finally turn around a new corner on the staircase, and a pile of stones blocks any further progress. Ian gives it the Buckley Test—a sharp kick—and a bit of loose rock comes crumbling off of it.

“We might be able to break through this,” says Ian, poking at the stones with his machete. “It'll take a bit, but I bet we can do it.”

“Wait,” I say, approaching the wall. The sigils glowing from it speak to me of a barrier, built and enchanted to keep the undead at bay. But there's something else, too, laid into the magic surrounding the wall. A warning, an explanation, and a series of instructions. As I close my eyes and empty my brain, a picture begins filling my mind. . . .

“This wall is meant to keep the undead from leaving,” I tell them, “but it's not the only way in. One of the stairs lifts up and creates an entrance into the sewers beneath Kudus. We can get through that way.”

“You got all of that from a
wall
?” asks Ian, his voice high and incredulous. “How's
that
work?”

“There's something here that's sort of a . . . magical message,” I say, trying to choose my words carefully.

“And you can, what, speak ancient Indonesian?” asks Ian.

Once again, his words make me feel useless and freakish all at once. “It doesn't matter. The sewers into the city are under a stair. I'm positive of it.”

We backtrack the stairs one by one, checking their edges in the hopes of finding a hinge or seam. By the fourth one, I'm officially beginning to feel foolish—here we are, three minors in the dark wearing over five thousand dollars' worth of expensive caving gear, tugging at stairs—until Ian gives the fifth one a pull, and there's the unmistakable sound of stone against stone. He and PJ pry the heavy slab of rock out of the ground and push it aside. From beneath it comes a heavy, rank must that fills the room and stings our nostrils, and we retreat coughing. With a second glance, I see a rusted metal ladder descending into the green pixilated depth of the hole.

“I told you,” I gag and hack. “Once the bad air clears . . . we can get down there and into the city.”

“This is probably the most booby-trapped place on earth,” coughs Ian.

“Forget booby traps,” gasps PJ. “These are probably crawling with zombies. The sewers are where all zombies end up in the movies.”

“Would the Wardens have left us this message if they were unsafe?” I ask, my throat still swollen with stench.

“Kendra, think about this,” says PJ. “Maybe these things are crazy wall-climbing freaks these days, but at one time, they were regular stupid zombies. If these people had sewers, they had entrances to them. You don't think that over hundreds of years, zombies might have squirmed down by the dozen? Or just fallen down manholes? Zombies are bad with gravity.”

Ian nods. PJ is our zombie expert due to spending much of his life watching movies with the plural noun
Dead
in their titles. To be fair, he's normally trustworthy on these issues. But I can feel, in my very gut, the magic at work here. We can't be afraid of some disgusting sewer if there's a chance of finding this lost city and locating our Warden while she's still alive.

“I can feel it,” I tell them. “It's magic. I don't know why, or how, but I can hear the walls. Something really bad occurred here, and that gate just informed me of this sewer entrance. It's our only hope. Think about O'Dea.”

“O'Dea would want us to be careful and think,” says PJ, taking what I think is a dramatically long breath.

“Can you really feel, like . . . magic in this stairwell?” asks Ian.