“And … what did you feel?”

“Nothing. No pulse.”

“You mean . . .”

“They’re corpses, Savannah. Dead as disco.”

He leaned over the steering wheel, using all his weight to veer the bus around a fallen tree.

“So what’s your plan now?”

“I’m going let them finish what they started, what we all started.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ve still got a football season to complete.”

He pulled the bus off the sandbar and steered into the woods. Savannah held on with both hands as he weaved the vehicle between trees, accelerating to keep the tires from settling. Behind them, the Jackrabbits bobbed up and down without complaint.

“Logan, just for a moment I’m going to suspend every vestige of common sense and practicality, and speak within the context that we are, in fact, driving a school bus full of the walking dead.”

“Okay.”

“Do you honestly think that we can just drive back to Killington and tell the entire town: ‘Hey, just kidding. Your sons are not really dead … well, they’re dead, but they’re still standing upright, and hey, you can’t have it all, right? So what say we challenge those Badgers to a game, show them once and for all that nobody messes with the Killington Jackrabbits and gets away with it’?”

“Sounds good to me.” He slammed the gearshift forward and pressed the gas harder.

“Logan, I’m being serious. Did you look at those guys? Did you smell them, for godsake? They’re banged up to hell . . .”

“Yeah, but they can’t feel any pain . . .”

“But you don’t even know if they can run, much less play football. And let’s be honest, they’re not exactly projecting a wealth of intellectual capacity. What makes you think they’ll understand a single thing you try to tell them?”

“They got back on the bus when I told them to, didn’t they? And did you see Butler catch that pass?”

“Could have just been a reflex.”

“Shane Butler is fast, but not that fast. He sure never had reflexes like that in life, I can tell you. Anyway, you heard what Mona said.”

“Just because I heard it doesn’t mean I believe it. Also, it doesn’t mean it made any sense.”

Cole saw a streetlight through the trees ahead. He stopped the bus about fifty feet short of the road, and leaned toward Savannah. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, “Look, I can assure you I don’t need you to tell me how fucked-up this whole situation is.”

“That’s putting it lightly. We just sent a naked woman to her watery grave at the bottom of a river, not to mention my father’s assistant coaches and the bus driver we sent down behind her.”

“I’m still trying to figure out why none of them came back around. Why would Mona’s spell have only saved the players?”