The Undertakers Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Ty Drago

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen and William Riley/Sourcebooks

  Cover illustration © Ryan Pancoast

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  www.jabberwockykids.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Source of Production: Versa Press, East Peoria, Illinois, USA

  Date of Production: March 2011

  Run Number: 14630

  When writing about an adolescent boy, it’s best to seek the advice of an expert. This book is dedicated to my son, Andy Drago, who read it and offered helpful (and often profound) insight into the realities of his age, his culture, and his mysterious language.

  Son, I couldn’t have done it without you.

  “Children make the best heroes.”

  —Anonymous

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  CHAPTER 1

  Dead Men Walking

  On a sunny Wednesday morning in October—a day that would mark the end of one life and the beginning of another—I found out that my next-door neighbor was one of the walking dead.

  The day had started typically enough, with Mom nagging me to get dressed. Emily, my five-year-old sister, was wailing because the cable was out and she couldn’t watch Dora the Explorer. And me? I was in the bathroom, trying to get that “sticky-up” part of my hair to lay flat.

  My name’s William Karl Ritter—Will to the world at large. I’m twelve years old and just about as “middle of the road” as you can get. I’m not skinny or fat, not really tall or short, not butt-ugly or particularly good-looking. What I am is a redhead. See, I’ve got my mom’s pale face and green eyes and my dad’s freckles and mop of orange hair, which he had always called the “family heritage” dating back to the old country. If so, then it was one weird heritage. After all, who ever heard of a redheaded German?

  I hated being a redhead—and still do. Sort of.

  Back then, I guess I hated a lot of things. For example, I hated middle school. The classes were boring. I hated being called Red all the time. And I especially hated when the school bullies pinned me down and played “connect the dots” with my freckles and a ballpoint pen.

  But most of all, I hated that my dad wasn’t there to make it all right.

  “Bus in ten minutes, Will!” Mom called from downstairs. “I’ve got a Pop-Tart for you!”

  “Okay, Mom!” With a groan, I gave up on my hair, fled the bathroom, and bounded down the steps three at a time.

  Mom was in the kitchen, calming Emily down with a glass of apple juice. “There’s nothing I can do about the cable, honey. It’ll come back on when it comes back on. Will, grab something to eat. You’ve got…eight and a half minutes!”

  “I’ll make it!” I said, shoving half a Pop-Tart into my mouth.

  “Isn’t today the deadline for the soccer sign-ups?” Mom asked, glancing sideways at me.

  The Pop-Tart suddenly caught a little in my throat.

  “I guess so.”

  She gave me her “mother” look. “I want you doing more with your free time than playing Xbox. A little exercise, maybe? Why don’t you sign up?”

  I made a sour face. “Soccer sucks.”

  “You loved it up until two years ago. Tell me again how many goals you scored that last season you played. Was it eight?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “But it’s, like, different now.”

  “Will, your dad would want you to continue doing the things that interest you.”

  “I know,” I sighed.

  “Sign up today,” Mom said firmly. “Emmie and I expect to see you in some games this fall. Got it, mister?”

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” I relented, only half-meaning it.

  Smiling, she forced a hug out of me, after which Emily dumped a sloppy kiss on my cheek. Then I snatched up my backpack from its place by the door and headed out.

  “Have a good day!” Mom called.

  I did not have a good day.

  I leapt down the stoop, letting the door slam behind me. I was determined to get all the way up the hill to the bus stop in less than thirty seconds. But before I could get as far as the sidewalk, I heard Old Man Pratt call to me. He sounded pissed. He usually did.

  Inwardly I groaned. What had I done now?

  I turned around—and instantly all thoughts of school, soccer, and bus stops went right out of my head.

  Pratt said, “You got your trash cans mixed up with mine again, boy!”

  He’d moved in next door to us about two years ago. His house looked almost exactly like ours, which looked almost exactly like every other house on Grape Street, which looked almost exactly like every other street in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia: a two-floor, vinyl-sided row home with square windows and a flat, tarred roof. The Manayunk Standard, Mom always called it.

  Pratt was the neighborhood grouch. Somewhere in his seventies, he lived alone, kept to himself, and got pissed off more often and with less reason than anyone I’d ever met.

  “I’m talking to you, Ritter!”

  I tried to speak—I really did—but no sound came out. When you turn around expecting to see something familiar—not particularly pleasant but familiar—and instead see something else altogether, it takes a little while for your brain to catch up with your eyes. Some people might call it shock. I call it the holy crap factor.

  Ernie Pratt was dead—very dead—which d
idn’t make much sense because as far as I knew, dead men didn’t get pissed.

  He was wearing what he usually wore in the mornings: a white terry-cloth robe and slippers, except the skin inside the slippers had gone as dry as old paper. His face was gray and pulled tight around his skull. One of his eyes was hanging out of its socket, dangling by a short length of thick, corded tissue. The other one, looking milky and sightless, nevertheless stared at me. His lips were gone, receded, revealing a black-gummed mouth with only half the teeth it should have had, and even those were as yellow as old eggs.

  Which is also how he smelled. The stench hit me like a hammer. I actually staggered back a step. The reek of rotted flesh turned my stomach, threatening the Pop-Tart in my belly with a hasty and violent eviction. I kept it down, mainly because I could tell that Old Man Pratt was watching me, ogling me with that one “good” eye. Looking for what? Fear? Disgust? Right then, I felt plenty of both! My knees had gone weak, and the world—my safe familiar world—seemed to be slipping like sand through my fingers.

  “What’re you staring at, Ritter?” the talking corpse demanded. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Then he smiled, splitting what was left of his mouth open in a grimace that sent a chill down my spine and out through all ten of my toes.

  Pratt wasn’t just dead. He’d clearly been dead a while—weeks maybe!

  But he hadn’t been a walking cadaver yesterday. I was sure of that! So just what on Earth had happened to him?

  “I’m…okay,” I stammered, somewhat surprised that words could come out of my mouth at all.

  The dead man regarded me, tilting his head at an odd, thoughtful angle. As he did, a series of black beetles bubbled up through a hole in his neck and ran down his collarbone, disappearing inside the white robe.

  That was all I could take. Wide-eyed, I started stumbling away from him. It felt like my stomach was about to explode out of my mouth. I glanced toward the front door of my house, hoping my mother might be standing there to see me off. She did that sometimes. This, however, was apparently not one of those times. No doubt Emily was still griping. I was going to die because the cable TV was out.

  “Okay, huh?” Dead Man Pratt replied. “You don’t look it.”

  Then to my utter horror, he reached over and caught my upper arm.

  I didn’t scream. If I had, Mom might have heard it and come to the door. Then things would have turned out differently—maybe worse.

  Instead I flailed and scrambled backward.

  Pratt was strong. I could feel his strength in the clutch of his gray, dry fingers. He grinned another of those hideous grins, looking like a rotting corpse that had just won the lottery. His one milky eye gleamed like a beacon as he started to pull me toward him.

  Then he spoke again. Except he didn’t. His black, lipless mouth never moved. I seemed to hear the words coming from inside my head—disjointed, as if he were uttering them one at a time and making an individual sentence out of each.

  “What. Do. You. See. Boy?”

  Acting on pure animal instinct, I swung my arm in a wide arc and brought it down on his wrist. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t aim. I just did it.

  I don’t know what I expected to happen. But one thing I didn’t expect was for Dead Man Pratt’s hand to snap right off the end of his arm!

  Suddenly freed, I stumbled backward, almost fell, regained my balance—and took off up the street in the direction of my bus stop. Halfway there, I noticed that the blackened dead hand was still clutching my shirt sleeve. Worse—it was twitching a little.

  At that, I finally did scream.

  Doing a panicked bee-in-your-shirt dance, I threw the gross thing off of me. It bounced into the bushes. Then I kept right on running, risking a quick glance over my shoulder.

  Pratt was standing where he had been, looking after me. His smile was gone, replaced by a scowl as he examined what was left of his arm. If lopping off his hand had hurt him, he gave no sign of it.

  I think I made it to the bus stop in less than thirty seconds. First time ever. There’s nothing like raw terror to get your butt moving.

  A handful of kids were already waiting there. One of them was Mike Reardon, a friend. As I reached him, panting and sweating, he asked, “You gonna die or what?”

  “Look down the hill!” I exclaimed, trying to catch my breath. My heart felt like it was about to burst.

  He looked. He frowned. Then he laughed.

  “What’d you do to Old Man Pratt?” he asked. “He’s standing there in his robe looking seriously pissed!”

  I swallowed, steeled myself, and then faced down the hill.

  The robe was there, but the thing inside them wasn’t a man—or at least, it hadn’t been for a really long time. As I watched, the cadaver waved with his one good hand.

  This time the chill ran up my spine and squirted out my ears.

  “Bus is coming!” someone announced.

  My cell phone was in my backpack. Should I call the cops? Call my mom? And tell her what exactly? That Old Man Pratt died maybe a month ago and didn’t know it? But then why hadn’t Mike seen what I’d seen?

  Shuddering a little, I dragged my eyes away from the thing down the block, watching instead the yellow school bus rumbling to a stop at the curb. As the accordion doors creaked open, kids lined up to climb aboard. I stood in the back, my mind reeling.

  Am I going crazy?

  CHAPTER 2

  Dead Men Teaching

  The bus ride up to Ridge Avenue took just ten minutes. It turned out to be a long ten minutes.

  By stepping onboard, I’d committed myself. Our driver, Mrs. Gardner, wouldn’t let us off once we were on—not until we’d reached John Towers Middle School. So changing my mind and running home to Mom was off the table. All I could do was sit stiffly on the seat beside Mike, trembling and not saying anything as the bus trundled up the hill, picking up kids every few blocks or so.

  And the more I sat there, the less sure I was of what I’d seen.

  After all, dead guys didn’t walk around, did they? They didn’t grab you, only to have their hands snap off on your shirt.

  Right?

  I didn’t know what had happened outside my house, but I was slowly managing to convince myself that it had been some kind of weird hallucination. A bad Pop-Tart maybe?

  When we reached the school, I staggered from the bus in a daze of confusion and uncertainty. I bumped into Mike on the way down the narrow steps, making him snap, “Jeez! What’s the matter with you?”

  “I dunno,” I replied, still feeling the dry clutch of Pratt’s dead hand on my arm.

  “You sick or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well…see you.” And with that, Mike veered away, looking uncomfortable.

  He thinks I’m nuts.

  The student entrance was always manned by a couple of teachers whose job it was to make sure that everybody got inside before the bell rang. Today it was Mr. Lafferty’s turn. Lafferty was a gym coach, a big impatient guy who kept ordering everyone to keep moving through the doors. Across from him, eyeing the lazy march of kids passing under his nose, stood Assistant Principal Titlebaum.

  I wouldn’t have recognized him if not for the stupid flower he always wore in the lapel of his fancy suit.

  Because the guy inside that suit was dead.

  He wasn’t as dead as Old Man Pratt had been. Well—of course he was as dead—just not for as long. Where Mr. Pratt had been a dried-up husk, cracking open here and there when he turned his head, Mr. Titlebaum was still—juicy. His flesh appeared tight and transparent, the muscles beneath visible, the skin moist and faintly purple.

  His head was moving slowly back and forth, his dead eyes scanning the crowd, looking for—what?

  They settled on me.

  Gasping, I stumbled sideways, trying to get as close to Mr. Lafferty’s side of the student entrance as I could.

  “Yo! Watch it, Red!” someone yelled as I bumped into him.
<
br />   “Sorry…” I muttered.

  Feeling dizzy with fear, I somehow managed to make it through the school doors.

  “Hey, Will!”

  There was Brian Kowalsky, one of my best friends. I tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. Brian didn’t notice. “You study for the math test?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I replied. And the thing is, I had. But that had been last night, when my life had been a whole lot simpler.

  “Not me. Fell asleep watching CSI. My mom freaked! Now she says I’m gonna flunk, and it serves me right.”

  It sounded like a mom thing to say.

  “I’m ready anyway!” Brian unconvincingly declared. “But can I copy off you…in case I’m not?”

  “Whatever,” I told him.

  A typical day at school.

  Homeroom came and went. My homeroom teacher, plump Ms. Carvelli, was clearly and blessedly unzombie-like. She led us through the Pledge of Allegiance and the morning announcements and then wished us all a good day when the bell rang. I considered talking to her and telling her what was happening to me.

  I didn’t.

  Instead Brian and I marched off to first period math, with Brian still fretting over the test and me just praying that our teacher, Ms. Yu, would be alive and well.

  She wasn’t.

  “Aw, crap,” I breathed, staring at the corpse by the blackboard.

  “Relax,” Brian whispered. “I mean, you studied, right? I don’t want to be copying off you if you didn’t study.”

  Saying nothing, I averted my eyes and took my assigned seat in the third row. Brian sat catty-corner and two rows back. I heard him shift his chair a little closer.

  “Get settled!” the Ms. Yu-thing said in her heavily accented English. “We have a test today!”

  “Hey, Red,” said a voice from beside me, and despite everything, my spirits lifted a little. Helene—spelled with three e’s but pronounced with three a’s—Boettcher dropped into the desk beside mine, just as she did every math class. At the sight of her, my mouth went a little dry, and all thoughts of walking dead people briefly receded.

  She absently brushed a lock of wavy light brown hair away from her big hazel eyes. “Ready for the test?”