Undead (ARC) by McKay Kirsty

Author:McKay, Kirsty [McKay, Kirsty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Young Adult, Contemporary, Speculative Fiction, Humour
ISBN: 9781906427870
Google: d0vtSlgVxEYC
Amazon: 0545381886
Goodreads: 10815267
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2011-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

1 5

“Somebody’s home,” sings Smitty, “over at the Frankenstein place . . .”

We’re standing at the castle gates. Most of us are standing, anyway.

Alice has collapsed onto her knees, and we’re too tired to pick her up.

Smitty is the only one left with any energy: Manic, with a side of Musical Theater. He has been singing all the way down the lane since we spied the castle. At first it was kind of funny and creepy, now it’s just plain annoying. The wind is picking up and my un-gloved fingers are threatening to drop off. The straps of all the bags are cutting through my shoulders like the thinnest of ribbons. I clamp my hands under my armpits and look up at what has stopped us.

The gates are high, with a heap of heavy chain wrapped around them

like a snake, and a big ol’ padlock. Whoever is in the castle is not at home for visitors. The light that led us here is from a ground-floor window next to a huge, dark doorway that I can barely see. One light on, and

one only.

I look around for some kind of entry phone on the gates, but this is

Scotland, not Beverly Hills. At the risk of losing my skin, I shake the

gates of freezing metal, but they barely move. They’re made of elaborate

wrought iron with no easy foot-or handholds, and are attached to an

equally high brick wall, which Smitty has already tried to bounce over,

Tigger-stylee.

“Do you think we can get in around the back?” I ask.

“Wouldn’t that defeat the point of having high walls?” Pete snaps.

“Why don’t we shout?” Lily says. “Whoever is in there will come and

let us in.”

“No shouting!” Pete almost breaks his own rule, nervously glancing

behind us. “For all we know, the hordes are close by.”

“Why . . . don’t we go in through the gates?” Alice slurs. She has

dragged herself up and is leaning against one of them. She fiddles with

the padlock and slowly unwinds the thick chain, which slithers to the

ground with a muffled thud.

“How the hell . . . ?” Pete stutters.

“Malice?” Smitty says. “Did you pick the lock with a nail file?”

Alice makes a snarky face. “The padlock wasn’t closed, you wanger.”

She holds it up in her hand.

We stare in silence. It has come to this. It takes the girl with the

concussion to see what’s right in front of our noses.

“I dunno,” she mumbles. “Sometimes you losers like making things

more complicated for yourselves.”

Smitty lets out a peal of laughter and claps Alice on the back as he

pulls the gates open.

Everyone is buoyed by our success, and once we’ve re-wrapped the

chain around the gate behind us, we hurry with newly strong legs over

the expanse of snow that separates us from the castle door.

The dark hulk of the castle crouches above us, the light from the

single window casting an orange glow at our feet. We climb a few shallow steps up to the door. The window is too high to see in; there’s no

curtain, but the glass is latticed with thin strips of lead.

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