All the Dead Arising Read online

“I want to call Grandma, Evie. She’ll know what to do, she’ll come over and help Mom and Dad,” Faith said as she munched on dry cereal. I’d taken it from the kitchen with my eyes closed so I didn’t have to see the two bodies lying on the floor.

  Grandma.

  That was actually a good idea, she’d know what to do. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and hit the contacts. The phone rang as I held it to my ear.

  Ring ring.

  Ring ring.

  The number you have dialed is not responding. Please leave a message after the tone.

  “Grandma, it’s Everly. Something’s happened, please call me back as soon as possible. Faith and I need help.” I hit the end button and prayed she would get the message. Something had obviously happened in our neighborhood but perhaps it was localized. Maybe the rest of the world was fine and ready to help.

  Something in my bones told me I was wrong.

  I left Faith and headed for my bedroom, hoping I would see myself lying in bed and fast asleep. Unfortunately, my bed was still made with the crinkles on it from the night before. So this couldn’t be a bad dream, then.

  The spirits had followed me, I swung around to face them. “Silence! Be quiet!” I managed to get their attention for one glorious moment. “What happened? Why are you all dead?”

  “Something happened, the noise, it was so loud.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “My children…”

  “The pain, it hurts so much.”

  “You have to help me.”

  They all started up again, offering nothing that would help me work out what on earth had happened. I had no parents, a nine year old to look after, and no clue about what happened – or what was going to happen.

  I fired up my laptop, desperate for some kind of answers from the outside world. The television stations were all off, the internet was my last shot at finding help.

  The regular news website I used hadn’t been updated since the previous day. There was nothing about an incident in my neighborhood. I’d never seen them report on the news so slowly before.

  Chat forums were my next stop.

  They were lit up like Christmas trees.

  I could barely keep up with the amount of questions being thrown onto the forums. Messages were coming in from all parts of the world. They were frantic and stressed.

  And they were all the same.

  Adults hadn’t only disappeared from our city but all around the world, too. It wasn’t just a localized tragedy, it was a global catastrophe.

  All the comments were along the same theme.

  My parents died, I don’t know what to do.

  My little brother keeps crying, what do I tell him?

  I can smell the dead bodies, should I bury my parents?

  My sister died too. She was only nineteen.

  The TV doesn’t work, does anyone else’s?

  They spun around in my mind until I was completely dizzy and even more confused. It probably should have been a comfort knowing I wasn’t the only one going through the horrible thing, but it wasn’t. All I felt was alone and sad.

  I needed a plan, a way of making sure I could look after Faith until someone fixed things. Surely the government still had to be working, surely they would send people to help us soon.

  But they were adults too.

  If I didn’t stay focused on the here and now, if I thought even a week ahead, I went into panic mode. I couldn’t do that right now. I had to stay sane so I could look after Faith.

  I needed to be the adult here.

  There was one person I knew I could count on and that was my best friend, Oliver. He lived in the apartment across the street. I’d seen him briefly last night after it happened so at least I knew he was alive.

  “Faith, we need to go out,” I called down the hallway. The nine year old appeared at the door a few moments later.

  “Where are we going? Can we go to Grandma’s house?”

  I now doubted whether Grandma was still alive. If my deepest fears were true, she and Grandpa were dead in their home. I didn’t want to see any more dead bodies. The two in my kitchen were enough for me to handle.

  “We’re going to talk to Oliver.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Is he going to take us to Grandma’s?”

  “No, Faith. We’re not going to Grandma’s at all. We have to work out what we’re going to do here.”

  She wanted to protest, it was written in every one of her features, but the little girl bit her tongue instead. Maybe she knew I was at the snapping point and barely holding it together.

  We crossed the road and almost ran into Oliver as he fled his apartment. He was puffed and headed somewhere in a hurry. “What’s wrong?” I asked, then wanted to laugh at my stupid question.

  Everything was wrong.

  Nothing was right.

  “I’m heading to your school,” he said, needlessly pointing down the street. We went to private schools, one just for boys and one just for girls.

  “School’s not going to be on today, Olly. I think we all have a free pass considering…”

  “No, it’s not that. A group of us are staying there, looking after the younger kids that can’t look after themselves. We’re serving lunch in an hour.”

  I openly stared at him as I tried to process his words. The greatest tragedy in human history and Oliver was still thinking of everyone else except himself. Of course the younger kids would need help if there were no adults anymore. Babies couldn’t feed themselves and toddlers could easily hurt themselves while they slowly starved to death.

  Some people went to jelly in a crisis situation.

  Others stepped up.

  Oliver was the latter. I always thought he was an extraordinary human being and now there was more than enough proof of it. If the pope had survived, he should make him a saint.

  The three of us walked to the school together, the whole time listening to Oliver as he updated me about what he had been doing all night and through the morning.

  He had gone door to door in the street, rounding up the children. He then gathered food from the supermarket and sequestered it away so kids didn’t go crazy and waste it. Finally, he set up beds and eating areas in the school auditorium so it could accommodate any child that needed help.

  Oliver was amazing.

  There was a line to get into the school when we arrived. “These can’t all be kids from our street,” I said. There had to be at least a hundred of them waiting to get inside.

  Oliver simply shrugged. “I guess word spread. There’s a lot of work to do.”

  While Oliver took Faith and me inside, all the spirits that had been lingering around the children rushed at me. They instantly knew I could see them, even though I was trying my best to ignore them. A cold shiver ran down my spine as they surrounded me, blocking out the living people.

  “We need your help.”

  “What happened to us?”

  “Why are we still here?”

  “Why does it hurt so much?”

  So many questions and I couldn’t answer even one of them. My hands went to my ears, covering them while I wished they would just shut up for one moment.

  I didn’t want anyone knowing that I could see them, I didn’t want to be the freak that saw dead people. I couldn’t be that girl, not when there was already so much going on.

  “Everly? What’s wrong?” Oliver’s voice broke through the mess of noise but only barely. I forced myself to focus on him and only him. Then I forced myself to smile like there was nothing going on.

  “Just a little tired,” I replied, with the lamest excuse ever. I was going to have to get better at blocking out the ghosts.

  Much, much better.

  Oliver continued the tour around the school while I tried desperately to ignore the spirits. I had always seen them but there were never this many before. Hundreds upon hundreds surrounded me until they were a sea of faces.

  “It feels weird being around the sc
hool,” I said, trying to focus only on the living. “You know, without teachers and stuff being here. I keep expecting to get into trouble for being out of bounds.”

  “I know what you mean,” Oliver said. “This whole thing is weird. I keep thinking about Mom and then I remember she isn’t here anymore. It’s like a blow to the guts every time.”

  I hadn’t seen Oliver’s mother in her spirit form. Nor my own parents, for some reason. Most of the ghosts I saw were people I didn’t recognize.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  “I’ve heard of another group helping kids,” Oliver continued. Faith bounced along behind us, trying to keep up and take everything in. I wasn’t certain she really understood the situation yet.

  That was definitely for the best.

  “What group?” I prompted, determined to stick with the conversation and not give myself over to the spirits.

  “Some guy that calls himself Jet. I don’t know if that’s his real name or not. Apparently he’s been distributing supplies around so nobody gets hungry. Kind of like what we’re doing here.”

  “I take it he’s a kid, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s good there are people like you stepping up to do this. You’re amazing, Oliver, you really are.”

  His cheeks glowed a nice shade of rouge. “I suspect I’m only doing it so I don’t have to think of anything else. If I can just focus on the now, I won’t have to work out what we’re going to do in the future.”

  I wanted to give him a hug, try to reassure him that he wasn’t alone, but we weren’t that kind of friends. We didn’t do the whole hug thing, it wasn’t us. As much as I needed a hug right now.

  A kid stopped us and told Oliver they needed him in the kitchen area. He gave me an apologetic smile before following the kid. The moment Oliver left, the ghosts stepped in again.

  “My baby is all alone. You have to get to him.”

  “I think we’re stuck. Isn’t there supposed to be an afterlife?”

  “Evie?”

  “I can’t take this pain much more.”

  “You can see us, you have to help.”

  “Please, kid. Please tell them I love them.”

  “Evie?”

  Faith tugged on my arm and I realized she had been trying to get my attention for a while. Her voice had mingled with all the others as I tried to drown them out.

  I felt insane as I tried to shut them all out so it was just me and my sister in the hallway. I kneeled down to her height. “What’s wrong, Faith?”

  “I’m tired. I want to go home,” she said. Her little face was so sad it almost killed me. How did I tell her that we couldn’t go home again? I couldn’t deal with the bodies of our parents on the floor anymore, I just couldn’t.

  The ghosts all started their relentless speaking again. They crowded around me so closely I couldn’t see Faith anymore. I was being swallowed up by the masses and I didn’t know if there was even room to breathe anymore.

  My chest burned as a tried to suck in oxygen but there was no room for it. I couldn’t breathe and black dots started to dance in my vision to prove it.

  The corridor was too small, way too inadequate to deal with both the living and dead. I started running without thinking. The hallways were familiar, but I never would have thought I would be running from ghosts down them.

  My feet moved without bidding as I flew down the corridors until I reached a door. I burst outside and gasped for some air. My knees gave out on me as I crumpled to the floor.

  There was a moment of sweet relief where I thought I would be able to handle everything going on around me. That perhaps I would be able to continue on and help like Oliver was.

  Unfortunately, it was short lived.

  Spirits emerged through the door, while others outside started to gather around me. There were dozens more than there were inside. Each of them started talking to me as soon as they realized I could see them.

  Tears started to sting my eyes but I didn’t want them to fall. If others could stay strong in these moments, then so could I. Falling apart now wasn’t going to help anyone.

  I used my voice as a weapon. “Please leave me alone. I can’t help you. I need to help Oliver and the little kids. I need to look after my sister. Please just leave me alone.”

  Their silence lasted for two whole seconds.

  They were wonderful seconds.

  The ghosts were more insistent than ever. They were never going to leave me alone.

  Never.

  Chapter Three