The Smoky Corridor (20 page)

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 and
Zipper 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 Pettimore
had 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 Snertz
raced 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 thought
he 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.

89

“Don’t be
fooled by this body,” Pettimore said to his slave. “It is I!”

“Yes, master.”

Pettimore’s neck felt stiff. This child’s body didn’t fit a soul of his size. No matter. In time, it would. The girl would grow. She’d eat all the richest foods in the world, because she would soon be the richest woman on earth!

Still, the captain missed a few of his ghostly abilities.

He could no longer flash into and out of portraits, see whatever he felt like seeing whenever he felt like seeing it. He couldn’t keep his eyes on all those who would rob him of his treasure.

Again, no matter.

McNulty could do it for him.

“Slave, you are hereby granted permission to, for this day only, ignore the talisman at the top of this staircase. You may enter the long tunnel!”

The zombie drooled, sensing that it was feeding time.

“Stay within all the other boundaries I have marked for you, but slay anyone you see sliding down the chute from the root cellar! Slay them and gorge yourself on their brains!”

90

“Hurry!” said
Malik. “I saw Azalea! Something’s wrong with her … and … and … I really think there is some kind of zombie down here!”

Zack heard toenails clicking against wood.

Zipper started grumbling.

Zack felt hot breath on the back of his neck.

He swallowed hard.

Malik was trembling too much to raise his flashlight.

“Is somebody behind me, Malik?”

Malik nodded.

Zack heard another growl.

Deep. Rumbling. Full of phlegm.

It wasn’t Zipper.

Slowly, very slowly, he turned around to see who or what was breathing down his neck.

91

“Hurry!” Daphne
DuBois screamed at her brother as they rushed into the school building. “We need to find Zack. He’s trying to steal the gold!”

“Look,” said Eddie. “On the floor. Paw prints.”

“That means Jennings and his dog came in here.” Her tone brightened. “Follow the tracks! Foolish boy! He doesn’t have much of a head start.”

They headed up the hall, eyes glued to the paw prints dotting the floor.

“And, Edward? When we find young Zachary Jennings, will you kindly put one of your bullets in his brain?”

“Why, it would be my pleasure, Daphne. My absolute pleasure.”

92

Zack had
never seen anything so gruesomely hideous!

Pettimore’s zombie stood nearly seven feet tall and had splotches of scraggly matted hair poking out around vein-riddled islands of scalp. His face was a skull wrapped in drum-tight skin. His fang-toothed smile cut across his cheekbones and crept up toward his ears.

But the worst parts were the bulging eyes. The dead and empty eyes popping out of their sockets.

Zack stepped backward.

“Stay back, Zip,” he said without taking his eyes off the blank eyes staring at him.

Drool dribbled out between the thing’s teeth. A drop splattered on the floor. Zack thought he heard it sizzle when it hit. Like battery acid.

The zombie was dressed in a tattered blue uniform—mostly shreds and threads. Zack could see his rippling leg muscles, the curling claws at the tips of gangly fingers and toes.

The jaw creaked open and Zack smelled sewer gas.

“You are trespassing,” the thing said, his voice deep and rumbling.

“No … I just came … to get my friend.…”

“You came to rob my master’s gold.”

“No, like I said—”

The crouching thing hopped forward.

Zack leapt back.

Suddenly, from the far end of the tunnel, all the way back at the entrance, he heard a thud.

The zombie heard it, too. Hesitated.

“Jennings?”

Snertz
.

The zombie perked up his ears.

“Where are you? I’m gonna kill you so bad.…”

One hundred yards away, a flashlight swirled around.

Phlegm rumbled in the zombie’s massive chest. “Slay anyone I see sliding down the chute,” the thing muttered. “Slay them and gorge on brains!”

In a blur of blue, the zombie started running up the tunnel, back toward the root cellar.

93

Kurt Snertz
had to rethink how much he really wanted to kill Zack Jennings.

Because some kind of giant rat-dog with two glowing red eyeballs was galloping up the long, narrow tunnel toward him.

He looked at the hole in the wall he had just tumbled through.

There was something strange burned into the wood above the hole, a black tattoo he hadn’t seen when he’d slid out:

Snertz had no idea what it meant.

He didn’t have time to care.

He just knew he had to scramble back up to the hole as fast as he could, because the thing with the laser-pointer eyes was only fifty yards away!

94

“That’s the
zombie!” said Malik.

“Come on, we need to get out of here.” Zack swung the flashlight back and forth. Twenty feet away on either side of the watch wall was the top of a staircase. “Zipper? Keep an eye up the tunnel while we figure which way to go.”

Zipper hunkered down on all fours in his preferred prepare-to-pounce position.

“If that thing comes back …”

“I already figured it out,” said Malik. “The pocket watches on the wall are another code!”

“Numbers for letters?”

Malik shook his head. “Semaphore flags!”

“Huh?”

“A system for sending messages by placing your arms, two flags, or, in this case, two clock hands in certain positions! They use it on ships all the time—to communicate with other ships.”

“Stand
watch
like a sailor should and your prospects shall be very good!” said Zack, remembering the last line from the stone.

“Exactly.”

“Malik, tell me you already translated this thing.”