The Smoky Corridor

19

Zack studied the slip of paper one of the teachers handed him at registration and, after a few wrong turns, found his locker.

“Good morning, Zack!”

It was Ms. DuBois, the pretty teacher he’d met the night before. She was carrying a stack of books and manila folders under her chin.

“Good morning.”

“All ready for a brand-new school year?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Exciting, isn’t it? I just love the smell of freshly sharpened pencils. I can’t wait for the school year to start!”

Oh, yeah. Zack couldn’t wait, either. School might also mean the smell of Ty-D-Bol up your nose when Kurt Snertz dunked your head in a toilet.

But he smiled at Ms. DuBois anyway. It was hard not to. She had such sky blue eyes. And that morning, she smelled like a warm cinnamon roll drizzled with icing.

“See you at third period, Zack.”

“Okay!”

She bustled off around another corner.

“Hey, Zack!”

It was Benny, his so-called friend from Stonebriar Road.

“This your locker?” Benny asked.

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Hey, me and Tyler meant to ask you on the bus: You gonna blow up anything here at school like you did to that tree?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? There’s a humongous old tree behind the gym building. It’d blow up real good.”

“I’m not blowing up any more trees, Benny.”

“I see. Movin’ on to bigger stuff, huh? What? Gopher holes?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What? Something even bigger? Oh, man! The principal’s office? That is so amazingly awesome! You’ll tell us before you do it, right?”

“Sure, Benny.”

“Cool!” And Benny dashed happily up the hall.

What was it Davy Wilcox used to say about Benny? About as sharp as a bowling ball, ain’t he?

Zack smiled, remembering his first true friend in North Chester, the farm boy who didn’t live in North Chester anymore.

He turned to his locker. Worked the combination. Slid up the handle and popped open the door.

“Howdy, pardner!”

Zack nearly fainted. “Davy?”

“In the galdern flesh, or whatever a dang ghost is supposed to say, seein’ how this ain’t actually flesh hangin’ off my bones no more, now, is it?”

“What are you doing inside my locker?”

“Your locker? Well, dang! This used to be my locker, too!”

“What?”

“I went to school here, Zack. Back in my day, we had us this one teacher, Mrs. Crabtree—Mrs. Crabbybritches we called her—made me write ‘I will not whittle in class’ on the blackboard five hundred times.”

“I don’t believe this,” Zack mumbled, practically crawling inside the locker with Davy to make sure no one passing could see him talking to an empty metal box.

“I decorated up this thing with a whole heap of magazine pictures. Snazzy cars. Bright red Ford Powermaster 861.”

“What kind of car was that?”

“That one weren’t no car, Zack. Powermaster’s a tractor.”

Davy had worked on farms all his life. First in Kentucky, which explained his funny way of talking, then right across the highway from where Zack’s new house was built.

“What are you doing here, Davy?”

“Can’t rightly say.”

“Right. The rules.”

Zack knew that ghosts weren’t allowed to come and go as they pleased or to do or say whatever they wanted to do or say. Being dead was sort of like being in school.

“Can you give me a hint?”

“Why you whisperin’ like that, Zack?”

“I don’t want anybody to see me talking to you!”

“Don’t worry, pardner. I’m invisible to everybody except you.”

“Well, that just makes it worse! I look like a crazy person, sticking my head in an empty locker and talking to myself!”

“All right, I’ll make this quick. First off, don’t listen to everything the Donnelly brothers might tell you. Them two still like to play with fire.”

“Okay.”

“Second of all, watch out for the zombie.”

“The what?”

“Zombie. Corpse brought back to life but without any soul inside. Mindless and mean. Can’t be drowned, suffocated, shot, or poisoned. If you cut off his head, the head will stay alive and keep snappin’ at ya. Fire’s just about the only thing that can kill ’em.”

Fire? Zack gulped. He didn’t want to do that again!

“Anything else?”

“Plenty. A zombie’s teeth can tear a man in half with a single bite. Likes to rip open coffins and eat the carcasses of dead people. If he bites you while you’re still alive and you somehow escape, guess what?”

“What?”

“You turn into a zombie, too!”

“Gross.”

“First human soul you bump into becomes your slave master.”

“Yuck.”

“Hang on. It gets worse. Zombies like to eat brains best of all. The younger, the better. He’ll scoop out your skull, gobble ’em down, take a nap, then nibble on the rest of you for a week.”

“And he’s here? At the school?”

A school filled with young brains!

“Not the school but somewheres close by. Been hanging around for over a century. Just ask any of the folks buried out back in the dadgum graveyard whose bodies he ate. Now, here’s the news flash: This zombie feller just woke up after snoozin’ for twenty years. There could be trouble a-comin’.”

“So you and your friends ‘upstairs’ want me to stop this demon like I stopped the others?”

“Don’t know if that’ll be possible this time, Zack. This here zombie is under the control of a supreme voodoo master, a ghost with juju so strong, not only can he control his meat puppet from the far side of the grave, he can also block us from seein’ where the zombie’s at or what he’s up to.”

“Juju?”

“Black magic. Witchcraft. Evil forces stronger than anything you ever gone up against. It’s why you kids are gonna need guardian ghosts for a while. Can’t bring no adults into this zombie situation.”

“Why not?”

Davy shook his head. “They won’t let me say.”

“What about Judy? She’s not like ordinary adults.”

“Best keep her out of it, too.”

“But …”

“Hey, Zack!”

He whipped around.

It was Malik from the bus.

“You better hurry. We don’t want to be late for homeroom!”

“Right. Thanks.”

He waited for Malik to head up the hall, then turned around to talk to Davy some more.

Only Davy wasn’t there.