Laughter of the Undead Read online

  “The one time being popular bites you in the ass,” I grunted, pushing myself to my feet. Both Izzy and Connor followed my example. “But right now you’re not popular, I’m not goth, and she’s not a loser.”

  “Excuse me— ” Izzy tried to interject, but I cut her off.

  “All we are is dead. We have to figure things out. Now that we’re all thinking logically, and not blindly being terrified, we need to . . . you know . . . think logically.”

  Izzy huffed a little and ran a hand over her hair before nodding slowly. “Logic. Logic. Do either of you have a phone . . . or something?”

  Connor shook himself from his vague daze and yanked a phone from his back pocket, hands trembling as he stared at the blank screen.

  “It’s alive, but . . . who do I call?”

  Then, as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, Connor muttered under his breath, “Ghostbusters.”

  Rolling her eyes, Izzy snatched the phone from Connor’s hand. “Well, first off, call the police.”

  She dialed and I glanced at Connor who watched anxiously as Izzy held the phone to her ear while it beeped. Neither of us voiced what we were both clearly thinking, and what Izzy was probably thinking too but didn’t want to be. If the police were coming, they would have been here by now. We’d all learned about Columbine and Sandy Hook and all the others where bad people held a grudge and children died, and SWAT teams and policemen and people that would help stop this should have been here. They should have come to help us by now.

  The phone rang out. I didn’t think that was even possible, but . . . then again, a few hours ago I didn’t think people could get back up after they died.

  After too long, Izzy gave up, and dropped my phone onto the tile, biting her lip in frustration. Her hand curled into a fist, “Well . . . that was a waste.”

  I shook my head and put a gentle hand on her shoulder, tentatively, almost afraid she would shy away. “Then onto the next thing. If the police aren’t here and they aren’t coming, we need to also be not here.”

  Connor nodded slowly and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up more than it already was. “Where should we go? Home? How do we get home?”

  “I don’t have a car,” I raised my eyebrows at Connor pointedly. If any of us were going to have a car, it would probably be him.

  “I don’t even have my permit, dude.”

  We simultaneously turned to Izzy, who widened her eyes a little as if to say “really”. “Connor, I rode the bus in the seat next to you. Why the heck would you think I have a car?”

  Connor shrugged, “Maybe you keep a tiny one in your backpack? I mean, you had ravioli. Maybe you’ve gone all Mary Poppins on us.”

  She let out a hard breath through her nose that might have been a laugh and I rolled my eyes. “Okay, plan B?”

  Izzy tapped her fingers against the tile. “We walk?”

  “Did you go outside this morning? We’ll freeze to death.”

  “Would you rather be eaten?”

  We fell into a painful silence, broken only by the heater that kicked on, making the three of us jump.

  We weren’t the only ones it startled. Somewhere outside our little room of safety, there was another burst of the discordant laughter.

  “Fine,” I ground out between clenched teeth, “we walk. Where to?”

  “My house,” Connor said nervously as he ran another hand through his hair. “It’s close enough to walk to. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty in this.”

  Izzy nodded, “Sounds like our best bet.”

  “Yeah,” I grunted, pushing myself to my feet, “let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  Five

  Izzy

  March 4th - 2:27 p.m.

  We were going to need coats. Despite the hours, we’d sat in the dark, the snow was still having its party, and if the fifteen degrees this morning was anything to go on, we were going to need them so we didn’t freeze to death.

  I’d stuffed my coat into the bottom of my bag after the locker incident this morning and Levi had never removed his aviator jacket. Connor was the only one who’d ditched his, and after witnessing its embarrassing puffiness, I understood. But that meant if we didn’t want Connor to die, we’d have to get it.

  “We have to defend ourselves,” Levi said as we stood, stepping into the hallway. “Those things are strong. How are we going to keep them off us?”

  For some reason, he turned to me. Why me? I was the smallest, the shortest, the least useful, but he was looking at me.

  I blinked, lost for a moment, before glancing back into the closet and smiling.

  “It’s not much,” I said, my voice not nearly as small as it had been before, finding strength in his confidence in me. I turned back to the door, taking out a wood-handled broom. “But these might work to at least push them away if we need to.”

  I handed it to Connor, who just glared at it a little confused. “What are we going to do, bat them like spiders?”

  I frowned, but Levi rolled his eyes, “Give it here.”

  He yanked it out of Connor’s hands and I stepped back as he stuck the bristle end of the broom on the frame of the door, the wood resting right where the door would close, slammed the door. A loud crack echoed, and when he pulled it out of the door, the head of the broom was gone, the wooden end instead with needle-like splinters. “There, Storming, instant weapon.”

  I nodded with approval and handed him two more brooms to weaponize.

  Levi and I followed Connor cautiously and quietly to his locker, avoiding the bodies still in the hall, the broken brooms in our hands. Broom handles had seemed like a dumb idea of a weapon, but the wood, hard in my fingers, provided reassurance, however minimal. On the endless walk through the hall, I did my best to not make a sound. Or wake the dead. At least their laughter was a sign. It felt like my head was playing a constant loop of the most suspenseful part of a horror movie, as it had been since that first scream, my heart boiling in a pool of dread that had collected in my chest.

  I tried not to see the bodies. There weren’t nearly as many as before and they were spread out way farther than they had been when Connor and I ran through the halls. Most of the bodies must have gotten up and stumbled away or been devoured by the other dead. Five hours was plenty of time for the cannibals to eat.

  The floors were still slick with the blood of the victims, both the ones who’d been shot and the ones who’d been used as chew toys. Luckily, the blood didn’t show against the red of my rain boots, but it stood out stark on the white rubber of Connor’s Converse, some dried and rust-colored, some gooey and black as tar.

  It was horrible and awful and every other synonym for bad that I could think of. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to cry. It must have shown because Levi, who was walking beside me, grabbed my elbow as if to steady me.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, my face growing hotly embarrassed but not enough to drown out the nausea from the death around me.

  “Don’t worry,” he said in his gravelly voice, “we’re going to be fine.” He said this as if he was reassuring himself as much as me, but I was still grateful for his words.

  At that moment, I heard the bubbling of laughter once again. I tensed. Levi released my elbow and gripped the handle of his broom tighter, his knuckles turning white.

  The three of us froze. I felt my heart banging against the inside of my chest, my pulse pounding blood in my ears.

  Simultaneously, we flattened against the wall, near a corner that turned into a hall filled with lockers.

  Turning the broom over and over in my hands, I squeezed my eyes shut, leaning my head against the back. I counted slowly to ten, allowing my senses to overcome my fear. There was only ear-ringing silence that I could hear under the laughter. The air felt chilly against my bare forearms, but it could have been nerves. The smell of blood permeated the air, the coppery sickly smell mixing with the stench of fresh flesh.

  “There’s only one,” Connor whispered, peering arou
nd the edge. “It’s just kind of wandering in a circle, running into walls.”

  I bit my lip. “How close is it to your locker?” I asked. Levi and Connor frowned at me with twin expressions that said, “why does that matter”.

  I shook my head, trying to think of a plan that would keep all three of us alive and not end up as one of those . . . things.

  “We all have the broom handles, right?” I asked, a plan formulating in my head.

  “Yeah,“ Connor answered, lifting his handle, the broken end sticking straight in the air.

  “You saw the first girl that got shot right?” I asked. Connor nodded, but Levi shook his head. “Well,“ I continued, ignoring Levi, “that boy, Evan, I think, he shot her in the head. She died and didn’t come back. In the head. That would have destroyed her brain. Maybe all those zombie movies have a point. You can’t survive without your brain. Period. If we can destroy the brain somehow, we can kill it.”

  “That is a great plan,” Levi said, “but how are we supposed to kill a brain, or whatever, with broomsticks? We’re not witches. We can’t cast spells.”

  I gave him a dry look. “Who says we are going to use brooms to destroy the brain?”

  Ten minutes later we had our plan clearly laid out. Even if there was only one in the hall, we didn’t want to take our chances. The evidence of what these things could do lay in the halls at our backs, half-eaten and seeping blood onto the tile. I didn’t want that to happen to us.

  With Connor in place, Levi and I nodded at each other and stepped into full view of the monster. I gripped my broom as hard as I could, terrified but hoping desperately that this would work, even with Connor’s earlier declaration of the three of us as “The Broom Squad,” as funny as that had been ten minutes ago.

  It took a couple of seconds, but the thing finally saw us. Well, it may not have used its eyes at all, but its head tilted in our direction and its awkwardly bent feet shuffled toward us. The eyes stared out into the distance over my shoulder. As it had before with Darren, the hysterical laughter turned into a low menacing chuckle. I shivered, but not because it was cold. I recognized it . . . her. She had once been the girl who sat next to me in Mr. Erving’s class, the one who’d gotten that stupid note. But she didn’t look dead. Well, she did look dead, but couldn’t have died from her wounds. She had a small bullet wound in her right leg, but it couldn’t have bled enough to have killed her, despite the amount of blood soaking the leg of her jeans. The only way that could have killed her was by infection, but the wound had been made too recently. Our assumption was wrong. Something else had turned her. I didn’t know what that was yet and I didn’t want to know, not with the empty-eyed cannibal stumbling toward me.

  The laughter coming from the thing that had once been my science partner was so disturbing, I felt like breaking into tears. A sob lodged in my throat. I couldn’t remember ever being so terrified in my entire life.

  Instead, I took a deep, shaky breath. It was good luck she moved so slowly, otherwise, I would have never had ample time to gather my nerve.

  “Ready?” Levi asked, voice tight.

  I nodded, then, realizing his eyes weren’t on me, said, “As ready as I’m ever going to be.”

  He grunted and flicked some of his black hair out of his face with a jerk of his head. “Well, it’s now or never,” he said under his breath.

  Levi rushed toward the giggling girl with me right on his heels. He rammed the broken end of the shaft as far as he could into the thing’s neck. It staggered, its laughter catching. Blood spurted out of the wound and its mouth. I almost retched but instead hurled myself at the thing too, but I didn’t leap like Levi had. I ran, all my minimal force in my legs driving me forward, and with both hands I shoved the broom into its chest. The sound of the splintered wood ripping into the flesh of the monster set my teeth on edge. It stumbled and fell on to its back, convulsing, blood spilling onto the floor, but it was still laughing, gurgling with the blood that had found its way into her throat. Bile lurched into my own throat and I had to glance away to keep it down.

  But it wasn’t dead yet. With great effort, it got to its feet again.

  I don’t know if it felt emotions, but if it did, it was mad. The laugh of the dead girl still gurgled in her throat as her body lurched toward Levi and me with vicious intent. I stumbled backward as fast as I could, my animal instincts kicking in and commanding me to get as far away as possible.

  “Storming!” I called. “Now would be an amazing time!”

  Connor shouted in what sounded like a war cry and charged toward it from the other end of the hall, fire extinguisher gripped in both hands. The thing had barely started to turn toward the new threat when Connor brought the extinguisher down on its head as hard as he could. A loud resounding crack echoed through the hall as its skull broke. It gave a tiny nearly human gasp and collapsed to the floor on its face, the laughter finally cutting off.

  I took a deep breath, shaking my head and slightly releasing the tension in my shoulders. “That was horrible,” I said, voice wavering.

  Connor nodded, but Levi just stared at the body, his expression unreadable.

  Finally, after a deafeningly long silence, Connor cleared his throat and muttered, “I didn’t get to say this earlier, but sorry. I promise Darren wasn’t calling you anything bad.”

  Levi frowned at him in confusion. I raised my eyebrows. “He wasn’t? Then what was he trying to say?”

  Connor set the extinguisher down on the floor and wrapped his arms around himself, still staring at the limp, bloody body, nearly tripping over his own feet as he tried to back away. “The note was kind of for me. It’s a long story.” He glanced at Levi and grimaced.

  I decided asking Connor why Darren would call him a slut was a conversation for another time and turned my own eyes back to the girl.

  That’s when I noticed it. On the back of the dead girl’s neck, something green and shimmery caught my eye.

  Tentatively, I knelt down and, careful not to touch it or get any blood on me, pulled away from the collar of her t-shirt. There, latched onto the back of her neck, was what looked like . . . a beetle.

  “What is it?” Connor asked as he squatted beside me, furrowing his brow at the back of her neck as if he couldn’t see what I saw. I glanced up at Levi, who was also glaring down, confused.

  Could they not see it? Could they not see a beetle the size of a bottle cap latched onto her neck and colored so brightly against her skin? Did that seem so normal to them that it wasn’t a matter of intrigue? I pointed to it, and though their eyes didn’t move, they widened, as if it had appeared suddenly. Connor frowned, “What on earth is that?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered.

  “It’s like one of those Egyptian beetles, a scarab,” Levi mumbled, peering over my right shoulder. Gathering my nerve, I grasped the beetle between my thumb and forefinger. It was hard and cold and didn’t want to release her neck. I yanked harder and it came off with a sound somewhere between a squelch and a rip. It wasn’t just on her neck— it was embedded in her skin.

  The sound alone sent a wave of nausea up my throat, but the blood made it worse and I dropped it without thinking, wiping my hands furiously on my leggings. Connor put a hand on my shoulder, as much to steady himself as me. His hand trembled, but it still comforted me. I covered my mouth with both hands, pushing down the nausea.

  The bug landed on it’s back, rocking gently, legs sticking in the air. It could be dead, but it was hard to tell. Pieces of the girl’s skin and flesh were clenched in its legs. A drop of the same black blood that had poured out of Darren dripped into the still pooling puddle around our feet.

  “What the hell . . . ” Connor said wrinkling his nose. I rolled my eyes, repressing my own shudder.

  “It’s kind of . . . cool, actually,” Levi said, plucking it from the ground in front of me, entirely too unfazed by the flesh and the blood. “Do you think it could be connected to all this?”

  “I
don’t see how,” I said, through my hands, “but maybe. What else makes sense?”

  Connor shrugged, “We don’t know anything about them. In movies, it’s always a disease or chemical warfare or a weird version of rabies. Assuming a weird bug did this . . . ”

  “This is the anomaly, though,” Levi interrupted, kneeling down opposite me. “There’s still skin on the little bugger's legs. It must have been super deep in her neck. This isn’t a normal bug. It was melded into her. And some of the legs are still there.”

  He was right. There were still what appeared to be feelers or legs sticking out of the hole in her neck, black like fly legs. My throat retched and I had to turn away, again fighting down the urge to throw up.

  “Hey, guys,” Connor said, tentatively flipping the girl onto her back, “I don’t think she was killed. I mean died before she turned. She was only shot in the leg, and yeah, she bled a lot, but I don’t think it was enough to bleed out. I know there’s a major artery in your thigh, but look.” He pointed to the wound. The bullet had pierced closer to her calf, just below her knee cap, and it would have missed that major artery, like Connor said, “Just where it is and how much blood there was before, I don’t think she was dead.”

  “Yeah,” I said, voice trembling, “I saw that earlier. It means we thought wrong. And in the news, it never mentions the cannibals dying first. Maybe it’s just bleeding that makes them turn, or pain? And if the bug is connected somehow, does it attach to them beforehand or after? Does it cause it? There are so many things we don’t know about what’s going on.”

  I was working myself up and I knew it, but I didn’t care. The world was literally falling apart around me and I wanted to know how and why. I stood, taking a shaky breath and wringing my hands.

  “Turn around,“ Connor said gently. I complied, not sure what he planned to do. I felt him move my ponytailed hair to one side and pull down the collar of my shirt. He was making sure there wasn’t one of those bugs on me. I silently cursed myself. I should have thought of that.