The Dead Read Online Free PDF

shell-shocked. Ed realized their friend hadn’t made it. He said nothing. Too sick to speak.
    There didn’t appear to be anyone else around out here, but a low moan from behind him caused Ed to turn around. The teachers were emerging from the House, covered in foam. They were too sick to move fast, and the boils and sores covering their skin made them walk as if they were treading barefoot on broken glass, but the boys knew from experience that they wouldn’t stop. Once they started to follow they wouldn’t give up.
    ‘Leg it!’ Bam shouted, and the boys raced across the open ground towards the main school entrance.
    Ed stayed at the back, helping Wiki and Arthur. They were smaller than everyone else and slower. Ed didn’t know what he’d do if one of them got left behind. He urged them on, shouting encouragement, aware all the time that the teachers were steadily lumbering along behind them.
    They rounded the end of School House and headed towards the archway that led out into School Yard. Ed spotted Jack ahead. He was hanging back, staring at the administrative building by the main gates.
    What now?
    Ed was too scared to stop. He sprinted through the arch, but, as he ran past, Jack grabbed hold of his jacket and pulled him back.
    Wiki and Arthur ran on.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ Ed’s voice rasped in his throat.
    ‘Can you see that?’ said Jack, and he blinked, as if not wanting to trust his own eyes.
    Ed turned in the direction Jack was looking. For a moment he could see nothing.
    ‘What?’ he said, scared and angry and desperate to get away. ‘What am I looking for?’
    ‘Over there. The office where the school secretaries work.’
    ‘What? What is it …? Oh, my God.’
    There was a girl at the window, hammering on the glass, her mouth forming a silent scream.

6

    ‘Who the hell is it?’
    ‘Dunno. Never seen her before in my life.’ Jack’s voice sounded as dry and croaky as Ed’s.
    ‘We should keep up with the others,’ said Ed, nervously glancing over to the road where Wiki and Arthur were disappearing from view.
    ‘We can’t just leave her there,’ said Jack.
    ‘No … I know … I didn’t mean that.’
    ‘Then what did you mean?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Ed massaged the back of his neck. Couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    ‘We’re going to go and help her,’ said Jack. ‘OK?’
    Ed turned back towards the archway. There was no sign of the teachers yet, but it was only a matter of time before they came through.
    ‘OK,’ he said.
    A look of relief flooded the face of the girl in the window as they hurried over to the building. She was thin, with long hair and a slightly large nose and mouth. Her cheeks were wet with tears and her eyes red.
    The boys gestured for her to open the window. She shook her head and indicated that it was locked.
    ‘Why doesn’t she just use the door?’ Ed asked as he and Jack went along to the front entrance. His question was immediately answered as they came upon a small pack of teachers scrabbling in the covered entranceway to get inside.
    The two boys backtracked quickly and, luckily, the teachers, too intent on trying to get in, didn’t see them. When they got back to the window, the girl was crying again, and knocking uselessly against the glass with a shoe.
    ‘That’s no good,’ said Jack. ‘It’s toughened glass.’
    Ed tried to control his fear, fighting the urge to suggest that they should leave her, and then he spotted two big green wheelie bins on the other side of the yard.
    ‘We could use one of them,’ he said, pointing. ‘Like a battering ram.’
    ‘We’ll try it,’ said Jack, and they raced across the cobbled paving to grab a bin. All the other boys had gone down the road and Ed realized he was alone with Jack in the yard.
    No. Not totally alone. The first of the teachers who had attacked them inside was shuffling through the arch, still dripping with foam.
    The boys trundled the bin across the cobbles, rattling