They crowded the doors at both ends of the gym, shouldering one another awkwardly as they tried to cram themselves through, their heads bobbing and twitching to the beat.

Terry froze in mid-step as he saw them. There must have been hundreds of them.

He could see them packed in the doorway with more behind them. It didn't matter that he and Cord had their pistols and their extra clips. This was an army of the dead. There was no way to fight an army of them.

He could smell them. Jesus, he could smell them. He gagged and dry heaved a couple of times as the record spun to a stop.

Cord saw them and smelled them, too. And when the record stopped, he could hear them.

Of course the dead didn't make much noise. There was apparently no air in their lungs for talking, so the only sounds they made came from movement. And there were so many of them that the movement was noisy.

It stopped, however, when the record stopped. Cord looked over at Terry, who was staring bug-eyed back.

"What are we gonna do?" Terry said in the silence that hung over the gym like a shroud.

The unmoving dead stood in the doorways as if patiently waiting. They made no attempt to attack Cord and Terry. Cord watched them for what seemed to Terry to be a very long time.

"Cord!" he said. "Jesus Christ, Cord. What're we gonna do?"

Cord thought about it for another moment, watching the dead. Then he flipped Huey 'Piano' Smith off the turntable. "Play some fuckin' rock 'n' roll!" he said. "That's what we're gonna do! Big Joe Turner!"

The opening bars of "Honey Hush" roared out of the speakers.

The dead began to move, like a big wheel in a Georgia cotton field.

They shuffled into the gym and began a loopy, stomping dance, their arms flailing, their heads bobbing. They came inside until they filled the gym. Others danced in the streets outside.

Terry was cut off from Cord. He found himself standing opposite a tall blonde dead woman who was missing part of her upper lip and all her fingers.

But she seemed to be smiling.

Could they hear? Terry wondered. Or could they just feel the fuckin' vibrations?

He couldn't hear Cord's voice when the record ended, but he knew his buddy was still there when Lloyd Price started belting out "Stagger Lee."

The dead woman in front of Terry was moving again, not dancing exactly, but moving. All around him, the zombies were having a jamboree.

What the hell, Terry thought. He started to move to the beat.

He kept on moving, right through Dion and the Belmonts and "I Wonder Why," through Buddy Holly and the Crickets doing "Rave On" and "Not Fade Away."

Cord could never play just one by Buddy, Terry thought. He kept on dancing through all the great songs. "Feel So Fine," by Shirley and Lee. "Get a Job," by the Silhouettes. "Book of Love," by the Monotones.

Terry had long ago lost his original partner. Then he noticed that a funny thing was happening. Well, maybe funny was the wrong word.

Things were going squish under his feet.

Eyeballs.

Fingers.

He had to hop over an arm. Then a leg.

The decaying dead were going to pieces right before his eyes.

The music went on, and it seemed even louder than before. Terry wouldn't have thought it possible for Cord to turn it up, but apparently he had done so.

And then it came. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. "Sexy Ways."

Before Terry's eyes, the words came literally true as Ballard sang them, and the zombies shook till the meat rolled off their bones.

It was an awful sight.

Meat sloughed off arms and hands, leaving the bones to jiggle and flap about.

Flesh peeled off skulls and slithered to the floor.

Pants filled with the fat meat of hips and bellies and popped under the strain.

The stench was incredible.

"Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle," Hank moaned, and the zombies did just that till their hips got tired and weak.

But they kept right on dancing, stomping on their stinking flesh, slathering it over the floor.

Terry wasn't dancing anymore. He was trying to get to the turntable, his stockinged feet slipping in the nasty goop that covered the gym.

Then Hank came to the part where he told them to fall out on their feet.

That happened, too. With no flesh to sustain them, dead dancers began to collapse right and left.

Bones shook, rattled, and rolled.

Terry could see Cord now. His friend was standing by the turntable, singing along, his throat taut, his fist pounding out the rhythm on the tabletop.

By the end of the song, Terry had reached Cord. There wasn't a zombie left standing, except for the blonde woman who had been Terry's first partner. She spun around among the body parts and bones as if the music were still in the air, but Cord didn't start a new record.

He and Terry watched as the dead woman herky-jerked her arms, as her head bobbed faster and faster and faster until all at once it popped off her neck like a BB out of a gun barrel and sailed ten feet through the air. Then it hit the floor and slid through the slime for another yard before coming to a stop in front of the turntable.

Nothing moved for a full minute.

Then Cord flipped "Sexy Ways" off the turntable and slapped down another record.

He looked out over the gym. Bodies and parts of bodies were everywhere. The stink filled the building.

"Is this a great hop, or what?" he yelled. "The tradition lives!"

"Goddam right!" Terry said. "Rock and Ro-o-o-o-oll!"

Cord cued the record, let it spin. "Goodnight, Sweetheart." The Spaniels.

The music followed them as they squished across the dance floor, went outside, and got on their skateboards. The music was still loud and clear out there, the harmonies smooth and seductive.

Cord and Terry took off their soaking socks and threw them on the grass. Then they got on their boards and pushed off.

The wheels of the skateboards doo-wopped them home through the dark.