We were trapped. Glass Face and Big Red blocked the stairs and elevator while Cornelius Blackwell stood between us and the lab. To say that they were angry would be an understatement. I’d bashed in the side of Big Red’s head, and thanks to Natalie, the lower half of Glass Face’s left leg was now barely attached at the knee.
But the angriest was Blackwell.
Not only had I chopped off his hand, but I had also stolen the one thing he’d come to get. He approached us slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. And while it was a struggle for him to form the word, I knew exactly what he was trying to say.
“Boooookkk.”
“What book?” I answered, trying to play dumb. “I don’t have any book.”
He snarled and motioned to the others to start closing in. As they did, Natalie turned so that we were back-to-back, our shoulder blades pressed against each other, ready to fight in any direction. We’d almost run out of time when she cocked her head to the side and whispered the one word capable of bringing a smile to my face.
“Shortcut.”
I knew exactly what she meant. The day he’d taken us to the Old Marble Cemetery, Dr. H had led us out of the morgue through a series of basement hallways. He’d called it his shortcut. Now it was our escape route.
First, though, we needed to distract the undead.
“Wait, wait,” I said, holding up my hands for them to stop. “I have the book, and I’ll give it to you. Just let me get it out.”
They held their ground as I slipped the backpack off my shoulder and then unzipped it. I reached in and grabbed the biggest textbook I could find (Advanced Biology, hardcover edition), careful to make sure they couldn’t see it. Then I looked right into the cold dead eyes of Cornelius Blackwell.
“Is this the one you mean?”
In one fluid motion I pulled out the book and swung it as hard as I could. I caught him squarely under the chin with an uppercut. He staggered backward, and that was all the opening we needed. We turned down the hall and started to sprint at full speed.
“Tell me you remember the way,” I pleaded breathlessly.
“Just follow me,” Natalie answered as she took the lead, a wild smile on her face.
Not once did I look back to see how close they were. All I did was run. We raced along the narrow hallways, through an old lab that reeked of formaldehyde, and up three mini-stairwells, fighting through the cobwebs, twisting and turning until we reached a door that opened onto First Avenue.
My immediate reaction was to suck in a lungful of fresh air and let out a sigh of relief.
“We’re not safe yet,” Natalie reminded me. “As soon as they get out of those hospital gowns and into street clothes, they’ll be able to follow us anywhere in Manhattan. They have your scent.
“We need to get off the island,” she continued. “Now!”
I looked for a cab but didn’t see one. It defies all logic, but whenever you actually need a cab, they’re nowhere to be found. If we didn’t need one, they’d be everywhere.
Then I heard the sound of the zombies coming up from the basement, and my heart went into turbo drive.
“I know where we can go!” I blurted excitedly. “Alpha Bakery.”
The bakery was only two blocks away. I knew that if we could make it there, we’d get help.
MIST doesn’t have a track team, but if it did, Natalie and I would have qualified based solely on our sprint down First Ave. I don’t think I’ve ever run that fast in my life.
When we finally burst into the bakery, we actually knocked the bell from above the doorway and sent it clanging across the floor. Luckily, there were no customers in the store. Only the baker, who was not particularly happy to see me so soon after his warning.
“What did I tell you about coming here without an imminent need?” he demanded, his big puffy cheeks red with frustration. But then he saw the panicked expressions on our faces and knew this was not another unnecessary visit.
This was real.
“This is an imminent need!” I declared. “We’re being chased by three massive zombies and need to get off the island right away.”
Talk about sentences you never imagined yourself saying.
“Quick!” he replied urgently as he lifted a panel in the counter. “Hide in the pantry.” We rushed through the opening and into the back of the store.
“Go in there and lock the door,” he said, motioning to a small storage room. “Do not unlock it for anyone but me.”
“How will we know it’s you?” I asked as I tried to catch my breath.
“There’s a monitor in there for the security cameras,” he explained. “You’ll be able to see everything in the bakery. Remember, no one but me.”
“Got it!” we said in unison.
We rushed in and closed the door behind us. Natalie bolted the lock and then took a deep breath. She relaxed for a second (but only one) before she turned to me and angrily asked, “How come he recognized you? How come he’d talked to you before?”
I didn’t have it in me to make up some elaborate excuse or explanation, so I went with the truth. “I broke the rules and came by the bakery. It was stupid, and I know that. But can you get mad at me after this is over and we know we’re still alive?”
There would be explaining to do later; for now she let it go and turned her attention to the monitor.
“Here they come,” she said, pointing at the screen, which had images from four different cameras. On one we were able to see the zombies walking up the sidewalk, and on another we saw them as they entered the bakery. They tried to act normal, which was a bit ridiculous considering their appearance. They were colorful . . . even on a black-and-white screen.
Big Red had combed his hair across the bald half of his scalp. Or at least, he’d tried to. It kept flipping back over, so that now it looked like a giant C on the top of his head. Glass Face, meanwhile, had taken all the glass shards out of his cheek, so now he would be more accurately called Open Wound Face. He also tried not to limp too noticeably, but the lower part of his left leg kept dragging behind him at odd angles. Finally, Cornelius Blackwell did his best to mask his missing left hand by sticking his arm deep into his jacket pocket. It would have been funny if it weren’t for the fact that they were trying to kill us.
And as if their bizarre appearance wasn’t already enough to attract attention, Big Red was sniffing the air like some sort of undead bloodhound hot on my scent. Despite all this, the baker acted like it was just a normal day and they were regular customers.
“Welcome!” he greeted them warmly. He winked at Big Red and offered, “I bet that’s the vanilla you smell. Wonderful, isn’t it? There’s nothing more powerful to the nose than the smell of vanilla. Nothing in the world.”
Natalie nodded, smiling. “Brilliant!”
“What’s brilliant?” I asked.
“He’s talking to us,” she said as she started to search the shelves of the pantry. “He wants us to find vanilla. There’s got to be some in here.”
The pantry was filled with giant-sized containers of baking ingredients. Twenty-pound bags of sugar and flour were stacked up along one wall while shelves filled with cans of cinnamon, bags of chocolate chips, and boxes of sprinkles lined the others.
“Check it out,” Natalie said as she crouched low. She’d found a row with gallon jugs of vanilla. “Triple-strength Madagascar pure vanilla concentrate.” She looked up at me with a grin. “This should hide your scent perfectly.”
“Great idea,” I said with a shrug. “But how do you suppose we’ll squirt it up his nose?”
She started to laugh. “That’s not what I meant. Close your eyes tight, this could burn.”
It still took a moment for me to realize that her plan was to cover my scent by covering me . . . with the vanilla.
“No way!” I objected. “You cannot be serious.”
“Yes way! And I am.”
“But I’ll smell for days!”
“You don’t have much of a choice,” she said as she started to unscrew the cap. “Unless you’d rather smell like Dead City?”
“Well, if you’re going to put it that way . . .”
If you’ve never worked in a bakery before, let me tell you that triple-strength Madagascar pure vanilla concentrate is as much syrup as it is liquid. It made a gurgling noise as Natalie poured it on top of my head. It slowly oozed through my hair, down my face, and, well, you get the picture.
It was pointless to fight, so I did my best to speed up the process by rubbing it in. My one lucky break was that I was still in the gym shorts and T-shirt I’d worn to fencing, so I wasn’t ruining any clothes I cared about.
Natalie tried not to smile too much, but she failed miserably. I couldn’t really blame her. When I saw my reflection in the stainless-steel door of the pantry, it took everything I had to keep from busting out.
“This is ridiculous,” I whispered, trying not to crack up and make any noise that might attract attention.
Ridiculous . . . but also effective.
It wasn’t long before the look on Big Red’s face became even more confused than usual. He had clearly lost my scent. A minute later he motioned to the others, and the three of them left the bakery.
On the security monitor we saw them linger on the sidewalk, trying to catch a whiff of me. Once they were gone, the baker snuck us out in the back of his delivery truck. He drove to Queens, dropping us off right in front of my apartment building.
Face-to-face on the sidewalk, no longer in danger, the three of us looked at one another and smiled.
“It’s been a while since I’ve done anything like this,” he said, pleased to have a little taste of zombie action again. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it. So tell me, did you two inflict all that damage? The broken leg? The missing hand?”
Natalie and I looked at each other and then at him. In unison we said, “Yeah.”
“I love it,” he said with a hearty laugh.
“Thanks for all the help,” Natalie said.
“Omega today, Omega forever,” he replied. “Anything else you need?”
“You got any tips on how to get rid of the smell of triple-strength Madagascar pure vanilla concentrate?” I asked hopefully.
“Showers, plural,” he answered. “Lots and lots of showers.”
He started toward his truck but stopped and turned back to us. He thought for a moment, trying to pick out the right words for what he wanted to say. “Molly . . . your mom . . . she was the best.”
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “They say she was quite the Zeke.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I meant,” he said, shaking his head. “She wasn’t just the best zombie killer. She was the best . . . everything. The best person I ever knew. She’d be really proud of you.”
A warm feeling came over me (although that could have been the vanilla settling into my pores) as I thought about her. Then I looked up at him. “Thanks.”
Natalie and I hurried upstairs. My dad was hard at work in the kitchen. Luckily, the powerful aroma of his spaghetti sauce let me slip by unnoticed. Natalie hung out in my room while I took a quick shower.
Okay, maybe “quick” is not the right word. Despite scrubbing so hard that my skin turned bright pink and washing my hair three times, I still smelled like an ice cream factory. But at least all the sticky goop was off me.
When I walked into my room, I found Natalie sitting on the floor with the contents of my backpack spread out around her. She had a worried look on her face.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“What happened to the book?” she replied, looking up at me.
“What do you mean? It was in my bag.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She motioned to the piles around her. “They’re all either textbooks or from the school library.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, thoroughly confused. “I know I put it there, and they never got near my backpack. Besides, I don’t have any library books. My card was revoked until next semester due to excessive overdue fines.”
“Seriously?” she said, shooting me an incredulous look. “How hard is it to remember to return a book?”
“Apparently, harder than it sounds,” I responded. “Now, do you mind not passing judgment? Just know that I don’t have any library books.”
“Well, then, what’s this?”
She held up a medium-sized green book and turned it so that I could read the stamp along the side: “Property of MIST Library.”
“Well, I don’t know why it was at the morgue,” I said, “but that’s the book they had. I never saw it before that scary zombie dude burst through the door and held it up in the air.”
Natalie cracked a crooked smile as she shook her head. “Then something’s really wrong here,” she said. “Because it does not make sense that three zombies would climb out of their graves, stage an elaborate death scene, tear up the morgue, and fight to the death to get a copy of this.”
She turned the book so that I could see the cover. And when I saw what it was, I had to agree that it didn’t make any sense.
The book was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.