Gravediggers (9 page)

“It's like the walls are screaming in my head,” I explain.

“Ugh,” he grumbles. “I'm not sure you hearing voices beats PJ's movie monster knowledge.”

“Ian, you need to trust me here,” I tell him. “This is something you cannot understand, but I promise, I have this power. Breaking down that wall is a very bad mistake.”

Ian nods, but doesn't look at me. PJ sighs and throws up his hands.

“All right,” says Ian, finally turning and stepping out a hesitant foot onto the ladder. “But if it's all a bunch of booby traps, or zombies, or booby traps
involving
zombies—”

“It won't be,” I say. After he finally disappears down, I follow him, and PJ, shaking his head, finishes up.

The ladder ends about five feet off the ground, so we have to jump. Ian spots me, then turns away and wipes his hands on his pants, as though I'm covered in some kind of sheen of grime.

After PJ touches down with a splash, we stare into the tunnel. Hanging clots of filth and rot drape across the passageway like fat in a clogged artery. In my night vision, it's all the same bright green filter, and yet somehow I can feel the lack of light, that lost change in energy that one
should
feel when descending into a sewer pipe. A claustrophobic shudder throttles me as I truly think about it—moving from one darkness to the next. No wonder the zombies mutated into those insectile aberrations.

The tunnels are long, hung with huge growths of mucuslike sediment from dripping water and covered with an ankle-deep slosh of scum at the bottom that gives off the unholy smell that still assaults us. Still, I cannot help but admire the architecture. For a city over eight hundred years old, this sanitary sewer is up there with any Renaissance city in Europe.

You'd imagine, Kendra. Luckily, this is your first trip down a sewer pipe. Maybe someday, you'll travel the world and spend your days wading through the sewers of cities like London, Paris, even Prague
.
Ah, the life of a Gravedigger. Or Warden. Whatever you are
.

Up ahead, the muck becomes thicker, rising to our knees. At this point, its phlegmy texture makes it harder and harder to pull through. In my night vision, I can see the lumpy mess coating the floor, quivering and gelatinous with filth. A collection of branches or pipe parts strikes my leg, and I yank my foot up and bring it down with a wet, meaty crunch.

Something slaps the back of my calf.

“Hey,” I say, turning back to the boys. “Who did that?”

They blink. “Who did what?” asks Ian.

As if on cue, there's a sound, deep and bubbling, as though an amphibian were gargling.

“YAH!” shouts Ian, yanking up a foot scum-covered. He looks toward us, frantic. “There's something down there. Oh man. There . . . there might be a zombie in all of this filth—”

“Stop,” says PJ. His voice is calm, barely a whisper, but it has a sickened tone to it that gets our attention. “Nobody move. I think I know what's going on here.” He sighs. “I just . . . really hope it's not that.”

“PJ?” I ask.

“In three, we pull up our goggles, we turn on our lamps, and we run,” he says. “Got it?”

Ian and I share a glance. Whatever PJ's thinking, his demeanor suggests complete confidence in this plan. We nod, slowly, and reach for our goggles.

“Three,” says PJ. “Two. One. Now.”

In a single, swift motion, I yank my night-vision goggles down around my neck and flick on the lamp on my helmet.

As the light crosses over the pale quivering muck beneath us, it contracts, pulling backward. Huge, bulbous shapes move through it and push up toward the surface as the gargling noise becomes a shuddering throaty howl.

And that's when I begin understanding. Before my eyes, the mounds of twisted arms tear wet, bloated skin from each other. Rib cages push up as though they were sea turtles beneath pale and veiny-marbled muck. As I survey our own footprints, each one opens a scabby hole into a solid layer of putrefaction zigzagged with bones. The first of the skulls rises free from the mass, turns its near-liquid eyeballs on me, and shrieks through thick bubbles of flesh.

Chapter Nine

PJ

U
nfortunately, I'm right.

The whole thing is zombies.

If I were making the movie of our trip down to this place, this would seem so blatant. Obviously, without sunlight and fresh air for over a century, the zombies evolved, conditioned themselves to no longer be the simple staggering monstrosities that we've dealt with all right. From what I know about these zombies—and believe me, I know zombies—there were two types down here in this lightless maze: those that clawed at the walls trying to get out, and those that stumbled into the sewers and wandered around in the wet and the filth for ages. The ones at the walls eventually sharpened their fingers, got skinny enough to climb, and began to communicate through vibrations.

And from what we've seen, water speeds up zombie deterioration. It melts them down, if it's too hot. But it was nice and cool down here, so they didn't melt all the way.

They just kind of . . . fused together.

The whole blob of merged human corpses rises up like a garden of death, like a swelling lasagna of dead people sloshing up around us in festering waves. The basic laws of zombie nature have gone horribly wrong here, the conjoined dead deformed beyond reason—there are zombies with three arms, two torsos, four people's worth of intestines spilling out of them. They all come pouring from the horrible pool of reanimated flesh around our feet.

“This is
the grossest thing I've ever seen
!” yells Ian, pulling back from the writhing mass. With every second we stomp through the flesh-muck, more arms, legs, faces, teeth, come shuddering out of the mound with soggy, burbling growls. My mind races, taking in the lake of dead bodies, the whirling of my friends' arms, the noise of our screams and their moans echoing through the tunnel—

—no. Eyes, shut. Mind, quiet. Put everything in slow-motion, bullet time. Think about O'Dea's advice. Know your enemy, and turn your fear into something that will outlive this repulsive scene.

“Jump!” I scream just as a bushel of rotting claws comes snatching at me. “If they're still moving, it means their spines are undamaged somewhere down in there! Crush them if you can find them!” My feet launch me up into the air, and when I come down I hear the wet rip of meat and a muffled crunch. Immediately, two of the zombie faces twisting my way shriek and sink back down into the depths of their own mangled forms.

Ian and Kendra follow suit, leaping through the air and landing hard on the bloated multi-corpse. Automatically, the whole pale gray mass begins shaking hard, sending vibrations through the sewer tunnel. Every single jump fills me with a twisted mix of pity, pride, and nausea. This poor zombie-amoeba (zomoeba?) has laid down here rotting into an impassable flesh-slick for ages and ages, so I'm glad I'm putting the poor creature at least somewhat out of its misery. But every noise and stench that rises from a hole I stomp in its giant body sends stomach acid back up to burn my throat and tears to the backs of my eyes.

As we hopscotch across the sprawling creature, my headlamp catches something rusted and green, coated with slime, but perfectly usable.

“There's a ladder!” I cry, pointing. “Come on, let's get out of here.”

“I guess you were spot-on about the zombies,” pants Kendra as we leap toward the ladder, protruding half zombies gurgling in agony and clawing at us with melting hands.

“Look on the bright side,” says Ian, “no booby traps.”

We take the ladder rungs two at a time. I barely feel the rotten iron grate that I heave up with my shoulders, but suddenly we're flopped out in the fresh air (fresher than the sewer, anyway—we're still maybe a mile underground), panting and desperately wiping the black gore from our boots on the dust-piled ground. Beneath us, the sounds of melancholy gurgling and the slapping of loose meat come in a horrible stomachache chorus.

“Okay,” I gasp, trying to keep my head clear and my breathing steady. “Glad we made it out of that. Now, let's get moving. We have to find Kudus.”

“Um, PJ,” says Kendra, pulling on her goggles and taking in our surroundings, “I think we're here.”

At first, when I switch back to my night vision, all I see are a few scattered huts and pueblos, and I can't help but think,
I expected more
. Then, I rise, and turn around, and I can feel my eyes bulge painfully from my head and my heart beat faster.

“Some city,” laughs Ian. “Isn't our cul-de-sac bigger than—”

“Turn around, Ian,” I whisper.

From behind me, I hear him follow my advice, and then a long low whistle leaves his mouth that echoes deep within the cave as he surveys what is easily the greatest set piece of all time.

The buildings start as small huts and crumbling houses, but soon there are multi-floor clay structures, huge longhouses with horned ends, one or two larger dome-topped buildings that could be anything from mansions to churches . . . but they are nothing compared to the temple. There in the distance it stands, a series of teardrop-shaped structures surrounding one main tower, the many-ledged point of its apex like a flame made out of stone, covered with leering statues of gods and demons and showing through its very size the sheer massiveness of the cave we stand in. The city of Kudus grows thicker as it nears these forgotten gates of hell, but though the buildings around it cluster together tightly, none match its height or its beauty.

And yet, seeing them this way, in green night vision surrounded by darkness and perfect quiet, makes my heart go numb in sadness and fear. Slowly, my eyes begin to take in more and more of the cave, the curtains of dust and filth that cover every hut and stone building, the piles of cracked and strewn bones jutting from the layer of cobwebs and rot that covers every inch of ground, the gaping black windows of the temple as it looms up in front of us like some kind of giant skull, staring down at the three puny humans who never should have seen it.

This isn't a city. It's a grave, one giant mausoleum. A hole for the murdered to wander aimlessly, never at peace, always hungry. Until three clueless morsels wandered into their domain.

I'm going to die down here.

My joints go weak; my head whirls. My eyes won't close; my breaths won't come. I am so tiny, the cave so huge, so endlessly dark, but so empty. There is only the temple, and all this death. My body lurches forward, and I fall to my knees. Kendra and Ian call my name and rush over to me.

“You okay?” says Ian. “You feeling sick? Need some water? We're running low.”

“He might just be claustrophobic,” says Kendra. “Remember, PJ, keep calm. Use the fear; make it function as something different.”

Hearing her try to repeat O'Dea's advice to me gives me a light shake, enough to let me clench my eyes shut and focus. That's why we're here—O'Dea. Our teacher is somewhere down here in the hands of a supervillain. If she's still alive, we can save her.

And if she isn't—if she's taken her own life to protect her people—then we've got some revenge to take.

I've got to get up.

Get. Up.

As I rise to my feet and shakily dust the crud off of my knees, I manage to gulp away my dry mouth and say, “Where do we begin searching?”

Kendra opens her mouth, inhales, and then makes a squeaky noise. “It's . . . anyone's guess,” she says. “Maybe we should go house to house? They could be anywhere.”

“Hey, let's not forget the zombie factor here,” says Ian. “Aren't you worried we'll bother them?”

“I doubt the zombies are just sitting in their homes, Ian,” says Kendra.

“Then where are they?” I ask.

The words freeze in the air as they leave my mouth, but I must strike a nerve—Kendra and Ian immediately whip around, scanning the streets. Here we are, on the outskirts of a city that should be swarming with horrible skeleton-people, and there's nothing, not even the tap of a finger bone. The sheer number of them means that there
must
be one or two around, and yet there's only deeper silence than ever.

“We need to get moving, at the very least,” says Ian. “The longer we stand here, the bigger pieces of bait we are.”

He's got a point. We scurry our way over to a nearby hut, throwing our backs against the wall. Huge drifts of age-old dust go puffing out around us, sending a sneeze rocketing through me.

Kendra stands and glances through the hut window. “Some bones, cracked,” she says, “but no O'Dea.”

Cracked bones. Something comes back to me from our time on the island—the zombies eat everything, even the bones. Danny Melee said so. So why all the bones? Did they go bad? Did the zombies have a change of heart?

“Let's keep at it,” I say, darting around the side of the hut.

The zombie I nearly run into doesn't seem half as surprised to discover me as I am to find it. While I take a leap back and wheel my arms while yelping like I've stubbed my toe, it just turns its eyeless head with a sickening pop and then begins making its careful way toward us with its clawed hands stretched forward. It sniffs the air in great hissing gulps through its nose hole, shelf fungus bulging out of the side of its skull and shuddering lightly with every deliberate step forward.

There's a click, and blinding light fills my vision. Flipping my goggles up, I see Kendra standing over the zombie, helmet light illuminated. The creature hunkers low, hissing. I follow her lead and turn mine on, and we back the shrieking corpse down into the floor, until it balls up into a shriveled lump the way the last one did.

This time, though, there's no chance of it reconstituting and dragging us through some kind of chasm—the minute it finished popping and crunching down into its balled-up state, Ian darts in and begins stomping on it as hard as he can, bits of leathery skin flying and bones cracking sickeningly, until the cave zombie is a mass of foaming black muck and shard-ended bone.

“There,” whispers Ian, wiping the zombie gunk off his shoe. “Let's see him come back now.”

As I switch back from lamp to goggles, I try to regain my composure. Deep breaths, blink hard, change the fear into drive . . . and always apologize. “I'm sorry,” I whisper.

“Stop saying you're sorry, man,” says Ian. “That's not a person. It would've eaten you alive—ugh, just
smell
it.” He waves his hand in front of his face. “That's not a human smell.”

No kidding—the foaming black blood coming from the zombie reeks, like old vegetables and spray cleaner rolled into one. It's the kind of smell only a dead thing that's been around for hundreds of years could have.

Wait a second.

Oh. Yes. This—yes. This is good. This is dynamite.

“We need to put it on ourselves,” I say, pointing at the zombie. “The blood, the dust from the floor—spread it on your clothes.”

“Excuse me?” says Kendra. “PJ, that's ridiculous. Zombie blood is probably poisonous—maybe even acidic.”

“Did you notice that these zombies have been sniffing the air?” I tell her. “Zombies are dead, Kendra. They don't breathe. These things have evolved to use smell to detect prey. If we spread blood and cave dirt on ourselves, we'll smell like zombies and be undetectable.”

Kendra looks from the zombie corpse to me, then back again. Finally, she huffs and says, “A layer of dirt first, then the blood. And none on our skin.”

Don't get me wrong, I'm not overjoyed by this—but it needs to get done. Zombie horror is all about survival, and that requires sacrificing comfort. We all take our time with the dirt and dust from the floor, spreading it leisurely onto our arms and legs, none of us wanting to deal with the next part. Finally, though, it comes time, and I realize that since I suggested it, I have to be the one who does it first. Trying not to think about it, I grab the zombie's broken-off foot and begin rubbing the stump up and down my arms, smearing black gore on my Melee Industries jacket.

The first test, I pass—Kendra's thankfully wrong, and the blood doesn't eat through my jacket with a loud acidic hiss like Alien blood. But I can't hold my breath forever, and when I finally do inhale, the scent of it stabs at my throat. As I gag, I turn my face away, doing my best not to fill my expensive goggles with tears.

“PJ?” asks Ian. “You all right?”

“Fine,” I cough, finally letting my nose and throat get used to the burning, toxic smell of age-old zombie. “Your turn.”

Slowly, my fellow Gravediggers grab hunks of stomped zombie—Ian an arm, Kendra a cross section of ribs—and begin adorning themselves. Both dry heave at the first close-up whiff, but they, too, seem to get their acts together.

“This better work,” grumbles Ian. “This is worse than Mitchell West's gym shorts.”

“Enough fond memories,” says Kendra. “Let's continue.”

Slowly, we creep our way from one building to the next, peeking into windows and whispering O'Dea's name. So far, we've got nothing—lots of cobwebs, furry piles of dust, outcroppings of festering mold, but no signs of people. No footprints. No O'Dea.

As we creep onto another street, two cave zombies come scuttling into view, hunched low to the ground. I throw up my hand, and my friends freeze behind me. With all my might, I try to keep my breathing slow and faint, my body absolutely still. Mentally, I urge my heart to beat quieter.

The zombies stop mid-stride, and one of them raises its skull face to the cold, dark air and sniffs. For a moment, they are perfectly still, and their gray colors and gnarled bodies make them look like they grew out of the rot piling around their feet. Their stillness is even more disturbing than any moaning or hissing. My legs shake; my teeth chatter.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was all in vain. Maybe now, we'll just die smelly.

After two more sniffs, the cave zombie lowers its head and turns to its companion. It puts its fingers to the floor and taps out another strange, clicking rhythm, like it did before. The other one responds in turn . . . and then another, and another. From somewhere deep in the sunken city, a whole stream of bone-claw clicks ring out through the air, traveling away from us like an echo. Like bats, the zombies use sound waves to send messages through the bottomless dark.