"Tough day, Dad?" Cord said when his father came in late that afternoon.

Mr. Willis slipped off his ammo belts and put his M-16 on the couch. He stretched up onto his toes, easing the tension out of his lean body. "Killed around fifty of the bastards," he said. "There was a whole nest of 'em down at Benson's Drug, sittin' in there at the tables where they used to meet for coffee every mornin'. Coach Pangborn and three of his assistants. Tom Herman--you know him, the bank president. Couple others. I sure hated to shoot the coach. I've kinda liked him ever since the boys won state two years ago."

He moved the M-16 and sat down. "And how was your day, Son?"

"OK," Cord said. He didn't mention that he'd had a few encounters with the zombies himself. "Terry and I hung out."

"Fine, fine. What's your mom fixin' for supper?"

"Same thing," Cord said.

"Spam again?"

"Fried," Cord said.

The gym looked pretty good, Cord thought, considering the fact that he and Terry had done all the decorating themselves. They had scavenged some crepe paper from a looted discount store and made streamers, and they'd managed to blow up a few balloons that they'd found at the same place. The school colors were red and black, while the streamers and balloons were blue and pink, but Cord didn't think anyone would mind.

He was right; no one minded.

Of course that might have been because no one showed up.

"Assholes," Terry said, looking around the empty gymnasium, with the streamers gently fluttering in the breeze from the open doors at each end. "I can't believe it. All this work, and not one single son of a bitch is here. Not even Mary Sue Taylor. I was sure she'd come. I thought she kind of liked you."

"So did I," Cord said, but he understood. After all, it wasn't everyone who wanted to fight through the roaming bands of the dead to go to a sock hop. In fact, it didn't look as if there was anyone who did.

Naturally he and Terry were disappointed, even if they understood. They had dressed to the nines, in faded jeans worn without belts, black loafers, white shirts, and white socks. They had their hair slicked back in duck's asses, with a little spit curl over the forehead.

They had even made punch, though that was not much more appropriate than the decorations. The only thing they'd been able to find left in the discount store was some Crystal Light unsweetened iced tea mix. They hadn't even been able to scrounge up any sugar.

"What're we gonna do?" Terry said. "We went to a lot of trouble."

What he meant was that besides decorating and setting up the gym, they'd also had to clean it out. The basketball coach hadn't been in there, but three members of his starting team had been. They were trying to bounce a ball and make passes, but without much success, considering their lack of coordination. Then, too, the ball tended to stick to their hands for some reason, and occasionally a bit of a hand or finger would come off and fall to the floor.

They gave up the game quickly enough when Terry and Cord came in, the remnants of their minds swiftly turning to the thought of a bracing mouthful of fresh live human.

Cord and Terry had been forced to kill them, of course, a job which was not made easier by the fact that they had been in English class with two of the players, and in math with the third.

"Ronnie was a pretty good dancer," Terry said when they were dumping the bodies out the back door. "I bet he'd've enjoyed the hop."

Now, however, no one was going to enjoy it. There was no way Terry was going to dance with Cord, and since they were the only two there, it didn't seem feasible to go on. Cord was his best friend, but there was a limit, after all.

"So what do we do now?" Terry said.

"We have the fuckin' hop," Cord said. "I told you. It's a tradition, and it's not going to die just because no one showed up. I'm playin' the records just the same."

"I'm not goin' to dance with you."

"Nobody asked you to, you turd. You can go on home if you want to."

"You don't have to take it out on me," Terry said.

"Sorry," Cord said.

He walked over to the turntable. Beside it was a stack of scratchy 45 rpm records. Some of them were left over from the sock hops of previous years. Others were from Cord's own collection, picked up at flea markets and garage sales. He liked '50s music better than a lot of what he heard on the radio, though some of it wasn't so bad.

Hallville High had a pretty fair sound system, with a good amp, and there were six powerful speakers located around the gym. Cord started things off with Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano doing "High School Confidential," the sound cranked all the way up.

All the kids were not at the high school rockin', Cord thought, but the music sounded pretty damn good in spite of that. It might have been merely his imagination, but it seemed that the walls were pulsing in and out with the pounding beat of the Pumping Piano. Terry wasn't dancing with anyone, but his foot was beating the rhythm on the floor, and his body was twitching.

"All ri-i-i-i-i-ight!" Cord said when the record came to an end. He segued right into The Johnny Otis Show doing "Willie and the Hand Jive."

Terry suddenly got a bad case of happy feet. He couldn't help himself. He dug that crazy beat, slip-sliding away down the length of the gym in front of the push-up seats, his hands doing the jive.

"Huey 'Piano' Smith and the Clowns!" Cord yelled. "'I Got the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu!'"

Terry had contracted it too, and he came swooping down the side of the gym in the opposite direction. If only Mary Sue Taylor could have seen him then! What the hell if he and Cord were the only ones there! The music was transporting him.

It was having the same effect on Cord. He just couldn't be gloomy about the failure of the hop, not with that pounding beat, that four/four time that got inside your head and caught up with the rhythm of your heart and brain. He grinned a wide grin.

And then he stopped grinning.

There was something out there in the dark of the evening, and it didn't look like kids wearing socks.

The dead were on the move.