Chris Grabenstein - The Smoky Corridor

“Hot diggity dog!” said Seth. “If we kill her, then we can surely rest in peace.”

“Maybe, little brother,” said Joseph. “Maybe.”

And while the zombie fiddled with gauges and stoked the firebox, Joseph started whistling, then singing again.

Glory, glory, hallelujah

Teacher hit me with a ruler

Shot her in the butt with a rotten coconut

And she ain’t gonna teach no more .

84

“Can thatpistol blow stuff up?”

The boy named Benny kept asking Eddie the same silly question, over and over.

“Can it, like, shoot exploding fireballs and junk?”

Daphne DuBois kept smiling. Pretending to like these children, most of whom she knew from her nightmarish lunches in the cafeteria.

“All right, children,” she said, putting on the sickly sweet voice she had used to fool them all into thinking she could tolerate their company. “Time for everybody to go home. Isn’t that right, Zack? Tell your friends to go home. Zack?”

“He left,” said Chuck Buckingham, the boy Daphne DuBois wished would just go have a heart attack and die already.

She started blinking. Couldn’t control her twitching eyelids. “He left?”

“Yeah,” said Benny. “Maybe he went to get a musket or something. Maybe a cannon. A cannon could blow up all sorts of stuff!”

“Eddie? Inside. Now! Children? Go home! Or I swear on my dead uncle’s grave, I’ll flunk every stinking one of you!”

The gaggle of giggly children instantly grew quiet.

The heartbroken clump of them just stood there.

The look on their faces?

Why, it made Ms. Daphne DuBois smile.

85

Zack andZipper hurried down the staircase to the janitor’s closet.

Zack shoved open the door and saw that Malik or Azalea or somebody had left the sliding shelving unit wide open.

He quickly grabbed a flashlight.

“Come on, Zip. Into the root cellar. I’ll close the secret panel behind us.”

But then Zack heard somebody thudding down the steps from the main building.

He wouldn’t have time to close up the secret portal.

“Let’s go!”

Zack and Zipper darted into the root cellar.

Zack whistled.

Zipper jumped up into his arms.

Zack sat down in front of the hole in the wall, worked his legs into the opening, and, snuggling Zipper, slid down the chute into the darkness.

86

Captain Pettimorehad the girl’s body stop when it reached the bottom of the thirty-nine steps.

This was his safe room.

He ignited the red and green kerosene lanterns dangling from the ceiling.

It felt good to do things again, simple things like striking a match, smelling the air, eating fried lard and eggs. He had done that at the girl’s home this morning when he’d first entered her body at eight a.m. By eight a.m. tomorrow, any lingering trace of the soul once known as Azalea Torres would be gone.

For now, his soul shared this one body with her soul. But her soul was weak.

Actually, it was slumbering in a trance. A deep voodoo trance.

“Brother!”

Pettimore felt the heart in his new chest skip a beat. The ghost who’d just materialized had startled him.

“Hello, Mary.” He had Azalea sneer at his long-dead sister. “My, you look pretty in your wedding dress. Did they actually allow you to wear white?”

“You must leave Azalea’s body!”

He laughed. “Are you insane?”

“Leave her, Horace! I beg of you.”

“Go away, Mary. You have done what you were born to do: You, through your offspring, have given me everlasting life. Now leave. Do not disgrace our family’s good name yet again with your shameful deeds!”

“But …”

“By the way, I met your husband in a battlefield hospital down south. He died a coward, Mary, turning tail and running from the enemy. He brought indignity and shame to all those who bear his name. No wonder you two got along so well!”

Weeping, the ghost of Mary Jane Hopkins disappeared.

Laughing, Pettimore reached for the amulet he’d come to that room to find. It was suspended from a gold necklace, the one he had hung on that wall so long before. A tarnished silver disk embossed with a cryptic drawing:

He draped it around his neck and left the small room.

He walked about twenty paces, then, instead of continuing straight on to the old steamboat boiler, went up an intersecting passageway headed east.

Pettimore reached a T and turned right. Within minutes, he was at the base of the right-hand staircase. He was in the zombie pit.

McNulty was crouching in the darkness, waiting for him.

87

Kurt Snertzraced down the staircase to the basement, taking the steps two at a time.

He had seen Jennings and his dumb little dog run into a room to hide.

Kurt chuckled.

You can run but you cannot hide—not from me!

Swaggering, he sauntered up the hall. No need to run anymore. Jennings was trapped inside, believe it or not, the janitor’s closet.

“Bad choice, lamebrain!” Kurt bellowed. “There’s all sorts of stuff in there for me to smack you with. Broom handles. Mop handles. Toilet plungers!”

Snertz shoved open the door.

The closet was dark, so he couldn’t see which corner scaredy-cat Jennings and his doofus dog were crouching in.

“Nice try, dipstick.”

Kurt flicked up the light switch. He saw shelves lined with cleaning supplies. A floor-buffing machine. Cartons of paper hand towels.

But no Jennings. No dog.

Then he noticed an opening in the far wall, right behind a set of shelves set at a screwy angle. It led to another room!

“Gee,” Kurt said, chuckling, “I wonder where wacky Zacky could be hiding.”

He made his way across the cramped closet, pushing boxes and coiled extension cords and cleaning crap out of his way.

“You are so dead, Jennings!”

He leapt through the opening.

Into another empty room. This one had a dirt floor and stacked stone walls. There were a couple of heavy metal-band posters taped up for decoration and a picture of that old Civil War geezer the school was named after. Shelves, too. Wooden ones. Lined with glass jars filled with moldy powders, rancid fruit, and pickled peppers.

“Gross,” Kurt muttered.

Now he saw a hole in one of the walls.

He went over to it. Got down on his hands and knees and peered into some kind of chute, only wide and deep enough for one person to crawl through at a time.

There was a box full of junk on one of the shelves. Inside it, Kurt found a miniature flashlight. He twisted it on. Shone it into the hole.

“Jennings? Is this your rat hole, you lousy stinking rat? Don’t make me come down there after you! Jennings?”

No answer.

“Okay. Now you are definitely gonna die!”

Furious, Kurt Snertz clenched the flashlight in his teeth and slid through the hole.

88

Zack thoughthe heard Kurt Snertz screaming something from way up at the entrance to the tunnel.

He didn’t care. He needed to find Malik.

So Zipper and he kept walking forward. Zack swung his flashlight back and forth. He could see they were in some kind of very long mine shaft.

Zipper barked.

Ahead, a flashlight swirled around and a faint voice cried out, “Zipper?”

Malik!

“Malik? Is that you?”

“Zack?”

“Hang on! We’re coming.” Zack and Zipper started running straight for the quivering light.