Chris Grabenstein - The Smoky Corridor

“No.”

“Then how do you know us?”

“I went to the library.”

“Who the devil are you talking to?” demanded Ms. DuBois.

Judy and George pointed. “The two boys,” said Judy. “The Donnelly brothers.”

“You can see ghosts? Of course! Zack gets his special powers from you two! His parents! What’s on the other side of that door? The one in the small chamber there.”

“How should I know?”

“Ask your dead friends!”

George moved closer to the two ghost boys. “Where’s Zack?”

“He’s safe,” said Seth.

“Did he and Malik go through that door?”

“Yep,” said Joseph. “They sure did. Then they jumped down a rabbit hole. You should’ve seen ’em. Landed on their keisters! Guess they want that gold bad, huh?”

“I don’t care about the stupid gold!” said George, wildly flapping his arm toward the open door to the small chamber. “But if that’s where Zack and Malik went to find it …”

Ms. DuBois’s eyebrows shot up when she heard that.

“Get out of my way!” She shoved George aside, ran for the door, jumped into the chamber, and slammed the door tight behind her.

“Lock it!” Joseph shouted to the drooling man at the furnace, who didn’t budge. “Seth? Tell your slave to lock her in!”

The man looked to the young boy, who nodded sadly.

“Yes, master.”

Joseph cackled with laughter.

The man lumbered over to the door and dropped a heavy steel brace into a bracket.

“Pump in the smoke!” shouted Joseph, and once again Seth nodded.

“Yes, master.”

The zombie returned to the furnace and shoved a huge lever forward.

“What are you doing?” shouted George.

“What that no-good, two-faced teacher done to us!” Joseph shouted back.

And then one Donnelly brother sobbed while the other one just laughed and laughed and laughed.

120

The roomthey had dropped into had six solid walls, no doorway.

But that hadn’t stopped someone from entering it: There were huge holes bashed through two of the thick stone walls. Flickering light fluttered through the far opening, from which Zack heard clinking and someone who sounded like Azalea on a really bad day barking orders: “More! Load the backpack!”

Zack raised a finger to his lips. Malik nodded.

In the dim light, Zack could see a steel support beam lying in a pile of rubble. Probably why the ceiling, which had been Zack and Malik’s floor, had opened up into a sinkhole.

Why was this room sealed off from all the others? Zack wondered.

“Check out the jars,” whispered Malik. “On the shelves and on the floor. Only one has a lid.”

“There’s something written on the sides,” Zack whispered back. “See the labels?”

“Yeah.”

“They look like names.”

“What’s the one with the lid say?” asked Malik.

Zack took it off the shelf. The glass felt warm, and something glimmered inside. “McNulty.”

They heard a thud and clank of something heavy falling to the floor. Carrying the jar, Zack crept closer to the hole in the far wall.

“You weakling!” shouted the voice that sounded like Azalea’s. “Surely you can carry more than that! Pile those bars on top of each other!”

Zack gripped the edge of a broken cinder block and peeked into the adjoining chamber—a room filled with shimmering bars of gold stacked ten feet tall, maybe ten feet deep.

“Faster, McNulty! I want to haul two dozen bars out of here before midnight tonight!”

“Yes, master.”

Azalea wasn’t alone.

The zombie was with her. And apparently, his name was McNulty.

Just like the name on the jar.

121

Judy heardMs. DuBois’s fists pounding against the door.

“You’ll kill her!”

Joseph Donnelly’s grin grew wider. “That’s the plan, ma’am!”

“And then we can go home, right, Joe?” Seth pleaded.

“Maybe, little brother. Maybe.”

George bolted for the door, got his hands on the lock bar, started prying it up.

“Stop him!” shouted Seth. “I want to leave this place!”

The zombie leapt across the room and, with superhuman strength, grabbed hold of George and yanked him away from the door.

“I promised Joe he could have the teacher! She’s evil!”

“But killing is wrong!” said Judy, moving closer to Seth.

Too close.

The zombie, holding George off the ground with one hand, strode across the room and grabbed Judy with the other.

“Protect master!”

When Zipper nipped at his ankles, the thing kicked the dog sideways, sending him skittering across the floor into the concrete slab holding up the broiling furnace.

Zipper yelped.

122

Zack heardhis dog yelp.

And then what sounded like his father shouting: “Where’s my son?”

And Judy: “Put me down!”

His parents were in trouble—and somewhere close.

He peered into the gold chamber. Saw a ladder bolted to the wall. It had to go back up to the furnace room. And since Malik and he couldn’t climb up the way they’d come down …

“I’m going in,” he whispered to Malik.

“Are you crazy? There’s a zombie in there with Azalea, who isn’t really Azalea right now!”

“Don’t worry. I have his soul!”

“What?”

Zack didn’t answer. He climbed through the hole and into the room filled with gold.

123

“You!” CaptainPettimore snarled through Azalea. “You’re the boy I thought would be the one!”

Zack’s eyebrows arched up. He had no idea what the man inside his friend was blabbing about.

“Kill him, McNulty!”

The giant flew across the room.

Zack held up the glass jar.

“Remember this?” he said to the beast.

The zombie froze.

“It’s your soul. It’s who you really are, not who Pettimore tells you to be!”

Zack smashed the jar down hard against the stone floor.

The zombie’s eyes opened wide.

Golden light, like a squadron of fireflies, zoomed up from the shattered glass and smacked the zombie square in the chest. He recoiled in shock. Surprise and joy and sunshine filled his face as he drew in one long breath.

“My name is Cyrus McNulty,” he said slowly. “I come from Indiana.”

“That’s right,” said Zack. “Welcome home.”

As McNulty smiled, his face seemed to bake—to dry out like mud in the sun. In an instant, it was crackled and brittle. In another, it crumpled into dust like it should have done back in 1864. The dead man’s empty rags drifted to the floor.

McNulty was gone.

“Come on!” Zack called to Malik as he ran to the ladder. “The other one’s upstairs and he doesn’t have a soul jar!”

Malik raced across the room and followed Zack up the rungs.

Azalea tried to chase after the two boys.

But she had loaded her backpack down with too much gold and could barely move!

124

The zombieholding Judy and George let go of them and sank to the floor.

Then he started quivering.

“Dude,” he mumbled.

It sounded like he was dreaming.

125

When Zackreached the top of the ladder, he was inside some kind of box.

Malik was two rungs behind him.

“You killed her!” he heard Judy cry.

“That’s right.” Joseph Donnelly’s voice. “Just like her no-account relative Patrick J. Cooper killed us!”

“The hero teacher?”

“He weren’t no hero, lady! He put a bullet in our brains and set that fire. Tried to make it look like we were the ones who done it! He got his, though. The door to his classroom locked behind him. He couldn’t escape, neither. Died with us, went straight to hell. Me and Joe stuck around ’cause some new grown-up had to pay for what that greedy gold-grubbing teacher done to us!”