Part 33 (1/2)

”What was that?” Noah said, but I already knew. I could feel it.

Putting the small case back into the chest, I closed the clasps and tucked it into my bag. ”Stay here,” I said, and ran outside to the stoop.

The campus was vacant as night closed around it like a curtain. In the distance, I thought I heard the sound of snow crunching beneath feet, but then it stopped. Sliding my hand down the railing, I waited, listening. My eyes darted to the left at a flash of movement. And then to the right. The wind swirled past me as something on the horizon seemed to flutter. And then the air pressure changed, compressing in on me.

I felt them before I saw them, their name whistling through the branches: the Undead. I heard a pitter-patter in the snow; soft, like the wings of a moth beating against a porch wall.

I backed up the stairs and into Horace Hall, where I took Noah by the arm. ”They're here,” I said. ”They're coming for us.”

But as we stepped out the door, I realized I was too late. They were already running toward us, their small bodies zigzagging randomly across the green, stumbling and then picking themselves up as they followed each other, building momentum like the beginning of an avalanche tumbling down a mountain. The professors must have felt it too, because slowly they came out of the buildings, some in suits, some in pajamas, their expressions distorted in confusion as they watched the Undead descend on the campus.

I reached for Noah's hand to pull him to the bas.e.m.e.nt, but he was already outside, running toward the Liberum, wielding his shovel over his head. ”Noah, wait!” I screamed, even though I knew he couldn't hear me. ”The tunnels!”

The Undead boys closed in on him, their tiny white hands grasping at his face. Picking up my bag and shovel, I ran after him. By the time I caught up, Noah had led them onto the lake, fighting them off with his shovel as he slipped across the ice. When I called his name, he hurled a child off his back and turned to me.

That was the moment.

He blinked, his gaze meeting mine, and the shovel slipped from his hands, its tip stabbing the ice by his feet. A jagged gash splintered through it, and just as his lips parted to call out to me, he fell.

The lake swallowed him, the water slos.h.i.+ng as he grabbed at the edge of the ice. But it only crumbled beneath his fingers, making him sink deeper.

I gasped as the Undead boys followed the sound of the water as it sucked him below, their bare feet sliding across the ice as they surrounded the hole. I was about to dash toward them when a palm pressed itself against the underside of the ice, only a few feet from the hole. I jumped back when I realized it belonged to Noah. Crawling toward it, I began to bang on the ice, trying to break it, but even under my sharp shovel, it wouldn't split.

”Noah?” I screamed, pounding at the ice. ”Noah?”