My So-Called Death

"Ex-cheerleader," I muttered to myself, the bare hint of a plan forming in my mind. I was only an ex-cheerleader because DEAD didn't have a cheer squad, not because I'd lost any of my mad cheering skills. I was still Karen Vera, the most fearless flyer the PHS JV cheer team had ever known.

  There had been girls on the squad who thought the only reason I topped the pyramid was because I was the smallest girl in the ninth grade. But I knew better. Now it was time to prove I was more than a runt with a decent toe touch.

  "You ever seen a basket toss?" I glanced over my shoulder at our maggot friend. He was getting closer, but not too close. This just might work.

  "That thing where they throw cheerleaders in the air?"

  I nodded. "Usually it takes two people, but we're going to try it with one. When I give the signal, make a basket with your hands and get ready to throw me as hard as you can.

  "Throw you where?"

  "At that thing," I panted. "Over its head, not, like, in its mouth. I'm going to distract it while you get to spelling."

  Saying the words out loud made the idea a heck of a lot more scary. What was I thinking? Sure, this would buy

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  Gavin time, but how was I going to get off the back of the maggot once I got on? Not to mention the fact that this stupid plan involved actually laying hands on a maggot. A giant, slimy maggot. I didn't even like to grab spoons out of the garbage disposal or fish hairballs from the shower drain, and I was thinking of riding something that fed on rotten flesh and garbage?

  "That's crazy! I'm not throwing you at--" "Do you have another plan?" I asked, praying he had something else, anything else.

  But instead of spouting plan-like wisdom, he just sighed. "No."

  "Then what other choice do we have? This will give you the chance to work the spell to summon a door." "But, how are you--"

  "I'll figure out a way to get back to you." I prayed the words were true. "Come on, we don't have much time. I can't run much longer."

  And I couldn't. My muscles were already burning. If I pushed myself any harder, I wouldn't have the leg strength left to really launch myself into the air. And I needed to launch. No way did I want to fall a few feet short of my target and end up in Slimy's mouth. This critter had some serious pincher action going on that looked like it would hurt. Big time.

  "Karen, I really don't--"

  "Now!" I grabbed hold of Gavin's shoulder as we both ground to a stop. Thankfully, once again, he didn't hesitate to act and act fast. His hands dropped into a cradle

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  just as I slid around in front of him and reached back to grab onto his elbows. Seconds later I'd bent my legs and jumped up, positioning my feet on Gavin's hands.

  We were a loaded weapon, ready to fire.

  "Now? Throw you now?" Gavin's voice held a trace of hysteria. Finally, he was losing his cool. And it only took staring into the face of a giant maggot quickly closing in on our position, wicked pinchers snapping in anticipation of a meal, to make it happen.

  "Wait, not yet. Wait!" I had to yell to be heard over the moist sucking sounds of the creature wiggling down the hall, but I had a feeling I would have been screaming anyway. I wasn't just a trace hysterical, I was full-blown freaked the heck out, but it was too late to rethink this Karen-throwing plan now.

  Our maggot friend was ten feet away...seven... five ...four...

  "Now! Throw me now!"

  "Now?"

  "Yes, now!" I shrieked, a sound that became a scream worthy of a horror movie as Gavin bent his knees deep and then shoved me into the air.

  For a few seconds I was weightless and free, liberated from gravity in a way I'd only ever experienced at the very top of a kick-butt basket toss. Whether it was Gavin's manly muscles or just the abundance of adrenaline pumping through his system, I certainly couldn't fault the boy's throw.

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  I sailed up and over our maggot friend's head before it could flinch, easily avoiding both pinchers and creepy bulbous eyes, and landing with a squish on its surprisingly firm back.

  For some reason, I'd expected its body to be soft and spongy, but it wasn't. It wasn't that slimy either, so who knew where the wet, sucking Jell-0 sounds were coming from. Maybe the underbelly was squishier? Call me crazy, but I was hoping I wouldn't find out.

  "Ahhhh!" I slammed my fists down on the creatures back a few times, screaming bloody murder, but it turns out I needn't have bothered. Mr. Not-So-Squishy was plenty disturbed by having me on his person--er, maggot.

  He bucked and thrashed, halting all forward movement toward the yummy dead boy in front of him in an attempt to get the dead girl on top of him off. Turns out maggots really don't like having people on their backs.

  They are much like unbroken horses or rodeo bulls or my father in that way. Dad never gave me a piggy-back ride around the house. Never. Even when I was a little kid. He refused to play any breed of fun, roughhousing games until the boys were born, which is clearly sexist and has probably caused me some emotional scarring. No doubt I'll end up talking about that with my therapist someday... after we work through all the post-traumatic stress caused by my dying on the sidelines of a football game, getting sent to a zombie school where one of my teachers turned out to be a killer, and wrestling a giant maggot.

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  "Karen! I think I've almost got it!" Gavin was busy down the hallway a few dozen feet away and had already summoned a blue light from the wall--amazing how times flies when you're beating on the white, spongy flesh of something that wants to eat you.

  "Okay!" I screamed back, hoping some sort of brilliant getting-down idea was going to fly into my head the same way the leaping-on-the-maggot's-back idea had.

  But it was hard to think clearly, what with all the thrashing and high-pitched screeching (my screeching, not the maggot's). I was fairly certain it couldn't make sounds, or it would have made some already. Maybe it didn't have vocal cords? Did baby worms really need vocal cords? Or were maggots baby flies?

  Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure they were baby flies. Hadn't Principal Samedi said something about watching out for flies who liked to lay their eggs in Undead skin because that's how maggot infestations got started?

  The thought made me cross my fingers that we didn't run into this baby's daddy. I'd looked at a fly under a microscope in sixth grade science and could totally do without seeing that up close and personal again. I was also pretty sure fly puke was made of acid, and having your flesh slowly scalded away by fly puke would probably be an even worse way to die than being eaten alive by a--

  "Karen!"

  Oh crap! Why couldn't I stay focused? What was it

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  about high-stress situations that made my mind go into tangent mode? You'd think it would be the opposite. You'd think being terrified or seconds away from certain death would help me to focus, for god's sakes.

  Focus... I had to distract the maggot's focus. But how?

  I didn't have a weapon, or a flashlight to shine in its eyes, or even anything to throw that might distract it long enough for me to slide to the ground and make a run for it. I didn't have anything in the pockets of my robe except for a tube of lip-gloss and the remnants of the brain bar I hadn't finished earlier in the library and--

  The brain bar! It wasn't dead flesh, but it was food, and this thing was definitely hungry.

  Clinging to one of Not-So-Slimy's fat rolls, I dug into my pocket and yanked out the bar, struggling not to fall off as he continued to buck and thrash. But once I'd freed the slightly sticky remains from the wrapper, I had a major moment of doubt. A brain bar wasn't very big, half a brain bar was even smaller, and this baby's mouth was really big. "What if my little smackerel didn't even register on its digestive radar?

  "Karen! Hurry, I can't hold the door for long!" Gavin was clinging to the handle of a plain-looking brown door that kept fading in and out like a bad television signal.

  I had to get down there ASAP or we'd both be out of luck, because it di
dn't seem like Gavin was going to leave without me. (I know! Isn't he the most amazing guy in the history of the entire world? I mean, the heroes in books

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  and movies never leave the heroine behind to be eaten by a giant maggot, but I was betting in real life a lot of guys would have hauled butt first and waited for the damsel in distress never.)

  The thing beneath me gave a mighty squirm and smashed its head into the ceiling, sending dust raining down on both of us. It wasn't getting any happier about having a passenger and I was out of time. It was the brain bar or bust.

  Refusing to think negative failure-type thoughts, I scrambled up closer to Mr. Maggot's eyes and peered down, waiting until it reared up again before hurling the brain bar between its pinchers and into its damp and gooey mouth. For a second, nothing happened. I had pretty much decided I was maggot food when the creature suddenly snapped its mouth shut and froze in mid thrash.

  I didn't wait to see how long this incapacitation-due-to-yummy-brain-bar was going to last. I just jumped up and ran, straight off the edge of its face. My legs and arms churned as I fell, as if they could somehow carry me further away from the monster behind me by swiping at the air. Time slowed to a horrible crawl, only jolting back to full speed when I landed with a groan--not three feet from the giant pinchers, close enough to feel the heat generated by maggot mastication. I winced as I stood. Pain shot through my left leg, but I didn't dare take even a second to assess whether my ankle was really broken or just felt that way.

  "Open the door!" I screamed as I half limped, half ran

  .

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  to where Gavin was still struggling with the door. Behind me, baby maggot screeched (I guess it could make sounds after all; there went the no-vocal-cord theory). "Hurry!"

  "I'm hurrying!" he shouted back, tugging on the handle until sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes. "It's stuck!"

  Smushy Jell-O noises signaled that our friend was once again on the move. "We had to get the door open! Now!

  I lunged for Gavin's arms, putting my hands over his and tugging with all the strength left in my body. Finally, after seconds that stretched into horror-filled oh-my-god-we're-about-to-get-eaten hours, the handle gave under our combined efforts and the door swung open toward us. We dove for it.

  Gavin and I fell to the floor inside the cool room just as a very hacked-off worm slithered straight into the still-open door, shattering the aging wood and snapping the door right off its hinges as it barrelled on down the hall. The door disappeared into thin air before I could even guess where we'd ended up, but that didn't stop me from sending up a mental shout of triumph. Wherever we were, it had to be better than wherever we'd been a few seconds ago.

  "We're okay. We're okay," Gavin was chanting under his breath. And turns out, we were.

  The floor beneath us was the cool, smooth tile found in the first-floor DEAD classrooms, and the air smelled comfortingly of zombie-kid campus: a mix of fried brains from the cafeteria, industrial lemon cleaner, and chlorine

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  from the school pool. It was fairly dark in the room, but then again, it was the middle of the night. It would have been weirder if the classroom lights had been on, right?

  So... we were safe. We'd escaped death by maggot and would live to tattle on Mr. Cork and hopefully recover the missing brains of Trish and his other victims before it was too late. This was the moment to take a deep breath and heave a sigh of relief... so why was I suddenly wishing for a one-way ticket back to endless-tunnelville?

  "Cork!" Gavin mouthed the word as he grabbed my hand and tugged me under a nearby lab station. We were in one of the chemistry labs, which meant there was room under the large table for both of us to hide. Thank. God.

  Because Gavin was right. I smelled the funk of Cork seconds before heavy footsteps sounded in the doorway to the classroom. Had he found us? Or was it just dumb luck that we'd ended up within striking distance of the most evil, skanky skeleton on campus?

  "Death in the temple would have been easier and far less painful. I can assure you both of that." More heavy footsteps, but Gavin and I didn't move a muscle. There was always the chance he was talking to someone else, and besides, we had nowhere to run--Cork was blocking the only way out. "I was attempting to do you a favor, Mr. McDougal, but you always have been far too clever for your own good."

  Okay, so there went the maybe he wasn't talking to us theory. Argh!

  We scrambled out from under the table and faced our dastardly English teacher across the rows of tables. At least

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  there were a few obstacles between us and him. Maybe we could find another way out, or Gavin could open another door, or someone would interrupt Cork before he could deliver on the threat of a harder, more painful death.

  "Or maybe you'll finally die and quit making things more difficult," Cork said. "I cast my vote for the last option, Miss Vera, especially considering Mr. McDougal is far too weak to open another door under nothing but his own personal power. I'm actually shocked he managed to open one at all."

  I wasn't. Gavin was the bestest, and Mr. Cork was clearly just jealous.

  "The bestest?" Cork laughed, a mean, narrow sound that made my fingernails itch. "Really, Miss Vera. I expected better vocabulary from someone worthy of an A- in my class."

  Unholy crap on a moist cracker. He was reading my mind--because I was sure I hadn't said the word "bestest" aloud.

  "And no, Mr. McDougal, Miss Vera can't tell how scared you are. You're completely pulling off the part of the heroic little man."

  "How the heck is he--"

  "It's the brains," Gavin said, grabbing my hand and pulling me a little closer. "He's been eating the brains, at least parts of them. It's given him the power to read our thoughts."

  "Clever, young Gavin." Cork clapped his skeletal hands. "Isn't he clever, Miss Vera?"

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  "Urn, yes." Was that a rhetorical question? Did I even need to answer out loud, since he was mind-reader man?

  Ugh, I didn't like that idea. At. All. It was sort of like Mr. Cork was going through my underwear drawer, but a thousand times worse. After all, my panties were all very nice and worthy of being found dead in. My thoughts, however, were not.

  "It's part of what makes him so attractive, that cleverness," Cork said, giving Gavin a slow, up-and-down look that would have been way more appropriate for... um ...me to be giving him. "Wouldn't you say so, Miss Vera? That young Gavin's confidence and intelligence are as much a lure as his undeniable good looks?"

  This time I didn't care if it was a rhetorical question--Cork was getting a non-rhetorical answer. "Actually, I think you're a complete perv. Gavin is still underage, not to mention a dude."

  "A dude?" Cork smiled, a baring of his teeth that somehow made him smell even worse.

  "Yes, a dude," I said, backing away as Cork shuffled closer to where Gavin and I stood. "I'd like to be cool with it since I believe in people's right to love freely and all that, but I'm just not okay with it in this situation. Maybe because you're old and evil as well as a dude."

  Cork laughed, a moist, wheezing sound that reminded me of the maggot's slither. "Old and evil, perhaps. But I'm no 'dude.' I'm as much a female as you are, Miss Vera."

  And then he started taking his skin off. Yes. His skin. Off.

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  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In his poem "The Darkest Hours," Akori explores the transitory nature of time and its effect upon the Undead world versus the human world. The contrast of the silence of the "nonbeating heart" with the pounding "hooves of the Roman horses" serves to emphasize the stillness of eternity versus the frenetic pace of human life.

  --Excerpt, Karen Vera's A- poetry assignment, Mr. Cork's 1st period freshman English class

  The rotted, spongy skin oozed off Mr. Cork's bones with the ease of a slicked-up sunbather coasting down a water-slide. Really, it was more amazing that the stuff had stayed on than that it was coming off.
It was that gelatinous and just plain gross.

  "Stay back, it could be poisonous," Gavin shouted, tugging me away from the green fluid rushing out from around Cork's feet in the wake of the skin sloughing. We scutded all the way to the wall behind us, only stopping to stare at the freak show when there was nowhere else to run.

  "You should see your faces. Priceless." Mr. Cork giggled as he stepped out of the puddle of his skin and clothes,

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  proving he really was way more disturbed than the average dude.

  Or chick, as he'd have us believe. He'd said something about being female, but who could tell when he/she wasn't much more than a pulsing mass of sickly-looking organs in a shell of thin, fragile bone?

  "Indeed. I've been forced to make do with grotesque, mostly male disguises. No one has been able to see me as a woman for many, many years. Far longer than either of you have been alive." She was sad now, her hideous brown eyes bulging in the raw, red tissue of her face, proving she was moody enough to be female.

  Not to be a jerk, but we females are, as a sex, more moody. That's not sexism, that's truthism. Boys don't run crying from rooms one-fifth the amount girls do. It's our hormones, I think. They're clearly more unstable than boy hormones, which is totally not fair and one of the many things I'll be taking up with god if there is one and I get to a place where I'm allowed to talk to him/her/it.

  "But all of that is about to change." Cork sniffed, and a sliver of grayish-green dripping from her nose crept back up into her skull. It was all I could do not to start dry heaving when I realized it was a little globlet of her brain trying to escape, not something more mundane and mucusy. "The spell I work tonight will finally allow me to regain my strength and my female form."

  "You can't work that spell. Those girls don't deserve to die," Gavin said.