Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,6

had had enough. “Look. I have to get changed.”

Steven froze, staring up at the ceiling. Bill seemed to sense his brother’s stopping and turned, looking up.

Alex saw it now, too. Neatly glued to a ceiling tile was a Nintendo DS.

Bill looked back at him, crossing his arms and blinking with something like innocence.

Alex said, “You have to admit, that is pretty funny . . .” but then he noticed that the books on the floor were starting to wobble the tiniest bit.

Steven looked at him silently and stepped up on the stack of books. He swiped up with one long arm, yanking the DS from of the ceiling. A puff of tile chalk ripped free as the DS came loose, and then Steven was falling.

Something was churning through the books and now Strange Creatures: Anthropology in Antiquity was dancing on end. It exploded in a burst of paper. The red worm creature, a starfish spinning in the air, soared and bounced off the wall. It landed on Steven’s back as he found his footing.

“What the hell is that?” Bill yelled, momentarily shocked. Alex balled his fist into a towel and swiped at it across Steven’s back, feeling it protest as it yanked free and flopped on the floor, spreading its starfishlike arms and breathing. “It’s like a—what is that, a bat?”

Bill was already raising his dress shoe to stomp on it.

Yes, kill it, Alex thought. Squish it before you get a good look at it. Bill’s foot came down and just caught it by the tail. The creature hissed and leapt, latching on to Bill’s shoulder and springing out the open door.

Bill turned, seeing the red-brown creature clinging to a bulletin board filled with sheets of paper offering guitar lessons and begging rides into town from upperclassmen. Someone was putting together a rugby team and there was a sign-up sheet, with a pencil on a string.

With its upper arms spread and flattened, it did look vaguely batlike for a moment. Bill moved with a speed Alex would not have expected from him. He took less than a second to yank the pencil free and jam it through the creature, impaling it in corkboard.

Bill glanced back at his brother with an expression of satisfaction. Steven was coming out of the room with the DS, trying to see around his own shoulders.

“Come on. Are you all right?”

“I don’t know, it bit me,” Steven said again.

The brothers began to stomp back toward the lounge. Bill called back without looking, “I’m telling Otranto.” Watching them go, Alex saw a slight trickle of blood on Steven’s back.

Alex looked back at the impaled creature. He would need to clean it up. At least it hadn’t—

It burst into flame.

Burst, just like a vampire, fwoosh, hot and fast, with flames spattering out and catching all the paper and even the cork of the bulletin board instantly. Alex gasped.

Fire. Put it out. Smother it. His first thought was to yank the board down; the board was wide and flat and if he got it smack against the floor it would probably go out. He lost that plan in two seconds, because he yanked at the board and found it to be bolted in place.

Need a new plan. Alex turned, running into his room and grabbing his damp towel. He came back and tried patting at the board. But as it howled and crackled, Alex realized that already the cork had caught deep. Years of glue and ground-up corkboard where pushpins had entered and exited thousands of times had created a porous, well-oxygenated sheet of kindling. The towel had no effect other than to be singed by the flames.

Need a new plan. Fire extinguisher.

He started to run down the hall in the direction of the lounge, where students were watching the movie. He thought he heard Bill Merrill, angry about something. About ten or fifteen feet past the lounge was the stairwell where, he remembered, there was a fire extinguisher.

Alex passed a red fire-alarm handle on the wall. He grabbed it and yanked it down, and all at once alarms filled the air, heavy-sounding klaxons that split his ears.

Past the DVD watchers in the lounge. His mind registered that Steven was lying on the ground but only Bill had noticed, and everyone else was looking up at the sudden alarm sounds. Alex flew through the door into the stairwell, finding the lean yellow fire extinguisher and sliding it off its hooks. He booked it back down the hall, realizing he