Terry and Cord swooshed down the street on their skateboards, weaving among the abandoned automobiles. There was no traffic; most of the living preferred to stay inside these days. Living pedestrians, in fact, were as scarce as virgins after a fraternity toga party.

The dead were all over the place, however, lurching around, bumping into the walls of buildings, stumbling over the curbs, running into one another, banging their foreheads on the lamp posts. It might have been funny if it hadn't been so pathetic.

Terry and Cord didn't know how the pitiful bastards kept going, but that wasn't so surprising, considering that no one else did either, not even the hotshot scientists that the government had put to work day and night in a desperate attempt to find out. The scientists been on the case for six months now, and they still didn't know jack shit, but then that wasn't anything to alert the media about, when you realized that they still hadn't been able to find a cure for AIDS. And look how long and hard they'd been working on that one.

Cord wheeled past a zombie that was sitting on the curb picking its nose, or it would have been if it had had a nose to pick. Apparently its nose had fallen off, been bitten off, or maybe just been knocked off when the zombie walked into a wall. It stuck its finger into the cavity where its nose and been and came out with something mushy and green, looked at it for a minute, and shoved it in its mouth. It wasn't interested in Cord and Terry at all.

Five others were, though. They'd sensed the fresh meat on the move and spread themselves across the street in a parody of the Houston Texans' down linemen. Every now and then some of them demonstrated the rudiments of intelligence.

"Fake right!" Cord yelled, pulling his Glock and angling his board.

Terry picked up on the maneuver instantly, and the two of them headed for the right-hand curb for just long enough to get the zombies leaning. Then he and Cord swung to the left, blasting away at the zombies on that end of the line. It was an effective ploy, and it might even have worked in the NFL if the offense had been allowed to carry firearms. The 9mm slugs punched small holes into the front of the zombies' heads and then punched much larger holes out the back, taking with them as they exited whatever part it was of the zombie brains that gave the creatures their semblance of life. Losing that all-important bit of tissue, the zombies fell over and flopped around like fresh-caught catfish.

"Watch their legs!" Cord said as he swiveled his way past them.

The remaining zombies still hadn't quite caught on to what was happening, and as they tried to turn back to get to the skaters, they stumbled into one another. Two of them held each other upright in a clumsy dance, while the third stumbled over the bodies of the two that still twitched in the street. He took a few happy bites from one of them, thinking that maybe he'd succeeded after all, but he soon sat up in disgust and ran his fingers into his mouth to pull out the morsels of rancid flesh that clung to his teeth and gums.

By then Cord and Terry were long gone.

"Better leave the boards out here," Cord said. "No use carrying them inside. "We might need our hands."

They set the boards down on the grass beside the wide steps leading up to the front doors.

Hallville High was dark and quiet when they entered the front door, except for a rectangle of light that glowed on the carpet down at the end of the hallway.

"Boy, those dead fuckers are stupid," Terry said. "I don't see why the government hasn't cleaned 'em out yet."

"Too many of 'em," Cord said. "And they make too many new ones. Besides, the clean-up started in the big cities first. They'll get the troops here before long, but by then your dad and mine'll have made Headless Horsemen out of most of 'em." In addition to Twain, their English class had encountered Washington Irving.

"Yeah," Terry said. Their dads spent a lot of each day in hunting dead dudes. "I guess they will."

They walked down the wide carpeted hallway, past the offices of the administrators and staff. The light was coming from one of the math classrooms.

"Shit," Cord said, coming to a halt a few paces from the open door. "Old Man Bonham."

Terry said, "You think...?"

"Hell, I don't know. Maybe." Cord drew his pistol. "I'd hate to have to waste the old fucker."

"Not me," Terry said. "He gave me detention for pinchin' Judy Terwilliger's ass in the hall one day, and I never did it."

Cord smiled. "Yeah, I know."

"You son of a bitch," Terry said. "It was you, wasn't it? I shoulda known."

"Too late for that now," Cord said. "Let's see if he's in there."

He was.

They could smell him before they saw him, the rank rotten smell of decay coming off him in waves, as it did from all the dead.

Terry looked at Cord. "Aren't you glad you use Dial Soap?" he said.

Cord nodded. "Don't you wish that everybody did?"

They looked at Old Man Bonham. One tendency that some of the zombies had was returning to the places where they had spent the most time while alive. Old Man Bonham, what was left of him, was sitting at his desk, looking down at the green blotter in front of him. On the board behind him was a problem some kid had worked on the last day of school. X's and Y's.

"Wonder why he turned the light on?" Terry said.

"Habit," Cord said. "He's dead for damn sure."

Old Man Bonham had been bald already, but now he was even balder. Much of the skin atop his head was missing, and his white skull gleamed in the light. Other than that, he really didn't look so bad. Many of the dead remained ruddy for days.

Cord and Terry stood in the doorway, pistols gripped in both hands, and appraised him. Even Terry didn't want to shoot Old Man Bonham while he sat so still and quiet.

He didn't sit for long. He sensed the two live bodies in whatever way the dead were able to do that little trick and slowly raised his head. His eyes were dull, almost flat. They did not glisten like the eyes of the living.

When he realized that fresh vittles were practically within his reach he stood awkwardly, shoved his wheeled desk chair back into the wall, and shambled around the desk.

"Shit," Terry said. "He wasn't such a bad guy."

"Yeah," Cord said. "As long as you didn't pinch any asses, he was OK. But that was then. This is now." He pulled the trigger, and the Glock jumped in his hand.