“Afterlife Academy,” I say quietly, hunching down – and bringing her with me – as we near the roof’s tar-covered border. “It’s where new zombies go to learn how to be human again. Now hush up; we can’t let them know we’re here.”
“Who?” she asks, and in reply I point across the street.
There, standing in a long line, all wearing black, are the Marauders; the vampires’ vampires, the baddest, meanest, hurtingest blood suckers on the planet.
Each wears a black suit, which they say is slimming.
Each has a perfectly bald head, even the chicks.
Each is armed with enough copper to stock a copper factory; copper bracelets, which are good for throwing, pockets full of copper pennies, also good for throwing or, in a pinch, shoving down a zombie’s throat and, my favorite, copper tipped stakes.
Fiona risks a peek over the rim of the roof and says, “Who are they?”
“The Marauders,” I say. “I knew they’d already be here.”
I count as far as I can see to the left, as far as I can see to the right and by the time she asks, “How many of them do you think there are?” I already have an answer.
“20, maybe 30,” I say, “which really sucks because it only takes about two of them to waste a dozen zombies.”
I creep back from the roof’s edge, dragging Fiona along with me, until we’re back down through the red square in the roof and resting safely on the top of the lockers again.
“You weren’t kidding,” she sighs as I gently let her down onto the splintery wooden bench.
“About what?” I ask as I join her.
“Those guys look pretty scary.”
“Yeah,” I snort, dragging her over to the showers. “And this is one time when looks aren’t deceiving.”
“So what are we going to do?” she asks.
I look at the red fire alarm box on the wall, reach out, tap the glass with my pinky, watch it shatter to the floor and yank down the tiny white handle.
In the second before the sirens wail and the alarms bleat, I answer her: “The only thing we can do, Fiona; run!”
* * * * *
Chapter 26
The alarms are blaring now, the entire school in panic mode.
I kick down the locker room door, burst into the gym and find the fake zombies in pandemonium.
Everywhere I look there are kids in gray face paint, leaking blood from capsules out of their mouths, streaming for the doors.
I find Roger and Tara filming every minute of it, and grab them.
I yank them by the collars out the back door and into the sunlight, away from where everybody else is running.
“What’s going on?” Roger barks, camera still running.
I knock it to the ground and he shrieks, literally shrieks.
“It’s called the element of surprise, Roger,” Fiona says knowingly, giving me a cheeky grin.
Tara slaps her smaller camcorder shut before I can yank it away and slips it into her backpack as they follow me to the student parking lot.
Kids are streaming out, regular kids, zombie kids, mixing, blending, all of them shrieking.
To Fiona I shout, “Where’s your car?”
She pauses, thinking about lying to me, and I start to growl, soft at first, then harder, like a dog who can’t decide whether to chase the mailman or not, and she points to a prissy lime green convertible.
“Keys,” I shout and, before I can finish, she hands them over.
Tara shoots me a satisfied look, but I’m not in the mood.
This has about 2.5 minutes to work, and we’ve already wasted .5 of them.
I find Fiona’s car and literally shove them in the backseat, firing up the surprisingly loud engine and gunning her car across the soccer field, the track and the Driver’s Ed loop.
As sirens start to wail down the street I fly up and over the curb and head in the other direction, away from the school, away from Piper and Alex, away from Ethan and Dana… away from the Marauders.
In my rearview mirror I see fake zombies flooding the street, heading straight for the vampires in black across from the school; just as we’re trained to do in case of a fire alarm.
On their heels are our teachers, frustrated and terse and not the kind of folks to take kindly at seeing a line of bald-headed freaks in stiff black suits (no matter how slimming they might be).
The Marauders crouch back into the brushy scrub pines that border Barracuda Bay, for which the town – and the high school – are named.
The fake zombies mingle, and scatter, and talk; just like real zombies.
Or are they fake?
By the time the Marauders find out, it will be too late.
Or, at least, that’s the plan.
I speed down Flounder Avenue, cut a left on Tarpon Lane and don’t let up until the Church of the Holy Redeemer is in sight.
I screech to a halt in the back parking lot, kicking open Fiona’s driver’s side door with the engine still running.
I hand Roger everything in my wallet; $37 and change.
“See that blue barrel by the back door of the church,” I tell him.
He looks, nods.
“Buy it. Inside; Father Finnegan will be in there, doing crosswords. Tell him it’s for me, and he won’t ask any questions.”
He shrugs, gets out and shuffles toward the back door of the church.
Meanwhile I back the car into an empty space and herd the two quivering girls out of the car and give them my room key.
I point to the room, easily visible through the chain link fence that borders the church’s parking lot and the Home’s.
“Open the door, barricade yourself in the closet and don’t come out until I literally kick the door in and yank you out myself, okay?”
Tara nods but Fiona lingers in her seat.
“Fiona?” I ask as Roger bursts through the back door of the church and starts rolling the blue barrel in my direction. “We don’t have a lot of time now. No doubt Ethan and Dana have figured out what I’ve done and are on their way, and I’m sure Piper is hot on their trail so… what gives?”
“What’s going to happen to you?” she asks, and the question is so uncharacteristic even Tara gives pause on her way to the fence.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” I smile as Roger appears. “I’ve got my bodyguard, remember?”
He flexes a muscle as if to prove it, and I watch the two girls scamper through the hole in the fence, then across the Home’s parking lot, up the two sets of stairs and into good old Room # 208, where I hope they’ll be safe.
“Think they’ll be all right?” Roger asks, hoisting the barrel up over his head with ease as he follows me through the fence.
“No,” I say bluntly, “but they’re in luck; I always keep everything I need to protect myself against a good, old-fashioned vampire invasion in my closet, just in case.”
He grunts, then asks the question I’ve been worrying about ever since I pulled that fire alarm.
“That’s great if the vampires get to them first, but what if the zombies beat them to it?”
“Then they’re screwed,” I grunt, helping him squeeze the blue barrel through the person-size opening in the rusty chain link fence around the pool.
The pool is empty this time of day, partly because it’s late fall but mostly because everyone who lives at the Home is still in school.
Roger and I roll the barrel to the edge and I kick off the top, watching it fall into the pool and float lazily toward the filter.
Holy water – pure and unfiltered and straight from the Vatican – glugs into the pool, mixing with the pool water seamlessly.
There is a box of pool toys near a picnic bench, mostly deflated beach balls and those rings you toss in the deep end and see who can collect the most.
I root around and grab four squirt guns and toss them into the deep end.
“Can I ask what we’re doing?” he asks as the last of the barrel water blends into
the pool and the squirt guns float by.
I pick up the empty barrel and toss it back over the fence; it rolls to a stop behind the pool house where the pump grinds endlessly night and day.
I shove him into the pool, then answer before joining him: “Going for a dip.”
He panics at first, flailing his arms and kicking his legs, until the new hardness in his body – and the lack of air in his lungs – sends him straight to the bottom.
I grab the squirt guns on my way down, opening the little plugs in the back until they are full of water and join us at the bottom of the pool.
I touch his hand, gently, and look into his eyes.
“Relax,” I say through a cloud of bubbles. “You don’t need to breathe; relax.”
I have to shout, and repeat myself a few times, but eventually he gets the picture, opens his mouth, lets the water in and… smiles.
“Cool,” he says, releasing a stream of bubbles.
I hand him a squirt gun, miming he should follow me as I shove first one, then two, then all three in my jean pockets.
He does so, but not without asking, “What are these for?”
I smile and shout-gurgle, “You’ll know when the time comes.”
Then I drag him, gently, to the deepest part of the deep end, until our backs are against the wall and we’re facing the shallow end, which is closest to the road and, I assume, where the vampires will look first.
Or last – or not at all – if we’re lucky.
But I’ve never been that lucky.
“What’s the plan?” he asks via a few dozen bubbles.
“Now we wait,” I gurgle, spreading my arms so the pool water fills every crevice of my body, every pore of my skin, every thread of my clothes.
Roger spots me, smiles, and does the same.
And the waiting begins…
* * * * *
Chapter 27
It doesn’t take long.
Not nearly as long as I’d thought.
We’re down there 10, maybe 15, minutes when I spot movement in the parking lot.
Black vans, three of them, screech to a halt just outside the pool fence, which is closest to the front office.
Luckily no one is ever in there, so I haven’t lured some innocent human to their death.
Instead Roger and I watch, hands clasped in the deep end, as Marauders pour from each of the vans one, two, three at a time, their black suits slick and lethal as they fan out.
They separate, and merge, and cluster, and flee, and we can’t see much but we can see their legs disappearing up the stairs, and combing every inch of the parking lot.
They knock on doors, kick a few down, break open car windows, yank off doors and slash tires with their deadly, claw-like fingernails as their frustration mounts.
Roger’s hand clenches tight as I’m looking to the left, and when I turn to him his face is staring at the shallow end, where up on the pool deck we can see first one set of legs, then two, then three, facing us.
Well, that didn’t take long.
The first few Marauders are joined by the others; even underwater we can hear them talking to each other, their slick black shoes scraping on the dry, bleached concrete of the pool deck.
One by one they line the deck, standing with military bearing next to each other until, eventually, the entire pool is surrounded.
I clench Roger’s hand for support, secretly wishing Ethan and Dana were here to help me, wondering where they are, and hoping Roger is up to the task.
Shoot, hoping I am!
We can see their faces now, the surface of the water calm, their mouths scowling, frowning, growling now, their fangs erect and piercing, their pale heads stubbly and shaven, their eyes deadly and orange.
I sit perfectly still, willing Roger to do the same, although his feet fidget and I’m afraid he’s going to bolt.
He inches forward, just slightly, and I yank him back harshly; he gets the message, and moves no more.
I blink my eyes, glad the pool guy hasn’t been here in weeks so that the chlorine level is next to nil.
We can stay here all day, all night, all week if we have to, but of course the Marauders won’t wait that long.
My only hope is that they don’t try to get us one-on-one; the plan will never work that way.
Roger looks left, looks right, and I feel his tension; something is happening.
There is a scrambling at the shallow end, a movement of legs, which were all clad in black a moment ago but now I see bare legs, long legs, pretty legs, hot legs – Piper’s legs!
Shoot, they’re going to use her as bait.
Little do they know, I wouldn’t budge to save Piper if she were the last vampire on earth.
Especially if she were the last vampire on earth.
But it’s not just Piper’s legs I see; suddenly there are jeans standing next to her, and clean white shoes, and a snug rugby shirt.
“Alex!” shouts Roger, releasing a cloud of bubbles.
No, no, this wasn’t the plan at all.
Suddenly the surface of the pool implodes, as Piper gets shoved into the holy water mix.
Immediately the water begins roiling, the vampire’s skin shredding and peeling as if from the worst sunburn known to man; the kind you can only get while laying out on the sun itself!
We hear screams as bubbles burst and Piper’s face turns toward us, her skin boiling, her face peeling, her fangs falling out as the holy water mixed with the pool water literally boils her alive.
“Now!” I shout as the pool water fills with blood and ash and fangs and bone, Piper’s high heels sinking to the bottom of the pool, one still containing the sizzling bones of her foot.
I yank my squirt gun out of my pocket and trudge through dirty pool water to the shallow end, emerging from the depths and spitting water from the gun, aiming at everyone but Alex, who still clings to the pool deck, one leg over the water as the Marauder holding him ducks to avoid getting fired on.
I splatter two, then three, then five before Roger joins me, firing off six or seven shots as the Marauders squeal and squeak, their faces, shoulders and hands burning as they try to protect themselves from the deadly holy water mixed into the little neon colored squirt guns.
Then I’m out of water, dumping the gun to the ground and reaching for the next as an Marauder tries to tackle me.
The minute his skin touches my wet clothes his hands start to sizzle, and before he can pull away I cling him to me in a bear hug, until he is a sizzling, smoking mess.
His screams fill my ears as Roger latches onto the closest Marauder and literally swallows her in his big, flabby arms.
The screams are piercing but now the Marauders are backing away; all but one.
“Silence,” says a commanding voice as I release the mortally wounded Marauder to the ground, where I quickly kick him into the pool to finish the job.
The boiling begins again, then continues as Roger follows suit, joyfully tossing his attacker into the soup that was once our humble little swimming pool.
There are at least a dozen Marauders left around the pool, all angry, but equally scared; all except one.
He just happens to be the one holding Alex; holding Alex over the pool.
“Stop!” Roger and I say in unison, reaching out and approaching the lead Marauder.
“Take another step,” he says, his voice crystal clear, “and I’ll gladly add one more ingredient to that soup.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, stopping in my tracks. “We’re fine, we’re here, we’re done, just… let him go!”
“Not quite yet,” he says, his voice velvety and smooth, almost magnetic.
If I were still a human, his magnetism – that secret vampire power that makes humans do their bidding – might still work on me.
Now it’s just annoying.
“First,” he adds, dangling Alex dangerously close to the pool, “tell us where your friends are.”
“She doesn’t have any f
riends,” yammers Roger, causing me to smile. “I made sure of that!”
The vampire looks at him in disgust, then starts walking closer to me, still holding Alex at arm’s length, just over the pool, with what looks like very little effort.
“Hush, creature,” the vampire snaps at Roger.
Then, to me he says, somewhat predictably, “My name is Winter.”
Stupid vampires and their stupid bad soap opera names; Winter, Piper, Bianca, it’s like they pick all their names from bad 80s movies.