Voice of the Undead Read Free Page A

the condensation. He saw the silver gray of his jacket glinting in the dim light. Nothing. Satisfied with the now-nearly-invisible ink stain, he yanked a towel off the rack and patted his neck.
    His jacket moved.
    Alex turned, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, brushing his head against a baseball cap of Sid’s that hung from the upper bunk next to the bathroom door. Across slick, tan-colored floor tiles strewn with the shoes, underwear, socks, wadded-up jeans, and sundry detritus of three fourteen-year-old boys stood Alex’s bunk. And on it, his jacket sleeve was moving.
    Worms .
    Elle had thrown those things on him and he thought he had gotten them all, but now he realized one of the critters must have made it into his jacket somehow. He padded in bare feet across the room, grabbed a hockey stick from under the bookshelf next to the window, and turned to face the jacket.
    Alex reached out with the hockey stick and touched the jacket sleeve. He saw it creep on the bed, wrinkling and bowing a bit. Alex put the stick against the collar of the jacket and dragged it onto the tiles.
    The sleeve danced and wriggled. The bulb in the center where the creature lay began to move faster. Alex looked around to see if there was anything better he could use, past Sid’s model kits and stacks of books. He could look through the go package, which lay on the floor.
    No, that was ridiculous. He’d seen these things. They were worms. Be a man, for Pete’s sake.
    The sleeve danced again and Alex smacked it hard with the hockey stick. Whunk . The bulge in the jacket seemed to undulate and for a moment lay still. He whacked it again.
    â€œThat’s more like it,” Alex said.
    The sleeve split and bloomed like a rose, cotton flying as the worm shot into the air. Alex was barely able to follow it as it zinged, spinning. It didn’t look like a worm anymore: It was growing . The worm landed on Alex’s headboard and grabbed on, because not only had it gotten bigger and split five or six ways, but it now had arms.
    The creature appeared to be made of some dense, dark reddish material that reminded Alex of congealed blood. It was about eight inches tall, with claws for hands and claws for feet on four spindly limbs, and a face comprised of a single, swiveling set of teeth.
    For a moment Alex stared at the blood-thing. Then it hissed, whipping its toothy head toward him, and he swiped hard at it with the stick. It leapt. The stick caught it at what Alex could only take for shoulders and it zinged through the air, landing on the door. Alex’s stick followed through and took out a lamp his mom had sent him. The air filled with hundreds of multicolored glass shards.
    The creature sprang with a whiny squeal and was on his chest, tiny claws crawling up his breastbone. Alex grabbed it, holding it out and away from him, and the tiny head whipped around and tried to chew at his thumbs. As it brushed its teeth against his hand, just missing his flesh, Alex saw the creature’s back swell out like the throat of a frog in anticipation. It was ready to start sucking him dry. Alex gulped down his revulsion and threw the creature across the room.
    The thing spun and slammed against Sid’s bookshelf, sending plastic model airplane parts and brushes and tiny paint tubes flying. It dropped to the tile, limbs scrambling against the slick stone as it tried to find purchase. Running, Alex grabbed a handful of Sid’s books and slammed them down on top of the creature. One hard lunge and he was sure he felt the thing squish under the stack.
    Drops of sweat fell from his brow onto the copy of Strange Creatures: Anthropology in Antiquity under his hands.
    No movement. Alex grabbed a couple more books, blinking against the smell of spilled turpentine, and stacked them on top of the rest.
    Someone was pounding at the door. Javi, Alex thought.
    Alex backed away from the bookshelf, watching for movement as the pounding grew