The Dead Boys Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  EPILOGUE

  Also by Royce Buckingham:

  Demonkeeper

  Goblins! An UnderEarth Adventure

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group. Published by The Penguin Group. Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.). Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.). Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd). Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India. Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd). Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa. Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2010 by Royce Buckingham. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Published simultaneously in Canada.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Buckingham, Royce. The dead boys / Royce Buckingham. p. cm. Summary: Timid

  twelve-year-old Teddy Mathews and his mother move to a small, remote desert town in

  eastern Washington, where the tree next door, mutated by nuclear waste, eats children

  and the friends Teddy makes turn out to be dead. [1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—

  Fiction. 3. Trees—Fiction. 4. Missing persons—Fiction. 5. Moving, Household—Fiction.

  6. Washington (State)—Fiction. 7. Horror stories.] I. Title. PZ7.B879857Ded 2010

  [Fic]—dc22 2010002850

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19831-5

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my editor, John Rudolph, who cut my first draft in half and believed I could fix it. Thanks, John, I think we’ve found the story’s place.

  I’d also like to thank my friend Eric Richey, who has a good idea every once in a while.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the federal government for dumping nuclear waste in my water until I was five years old, and without whom the mutant kid-eating tree in my backyard never would have grown . . .

  Royce

  PROLOGUE

  In its early years, the sycamore tree stretched its branches up toward the light, reaching for the desert sun and its life-giving energy. Beneath the ground, it groped for scarce water and nutrients. Its roots ran far and deep through the dry sand to find what it needed, and when they finally reached the huge Columbia River nearby, it drank heartily.

  But it found something else in the water it hadn’t expected—warm energy similar to the kind it drew from the sun. The tree soaked up the new radiation directly into its porous wood. It couldn’t know that the energy came from the Hanford nuclear plant upriver.

  Over time, the tree changed. It grew unnaturally large above the ground and even larger underneath. Before, it had struggled in the arid desert, but now it thrived on the strange nourishment it had discovered, and it grew hungry for more.

  Then one day, a twelve-year-old boy climbed the tree’s limbs to hide in the large hollow of its trunk. The ravenous tree felt his youthful energy, and it wanted that too.

  The boy would not go down while his angry father roamed the yard, screaming for him to come back and take his medicine. As the boy sat tucked away in the tree, the desert heat overcame him. He began to grow weak, dehydrated, and he fainted.

  Before long, the boy was dying. But the tree caught him in the place between life and death. It found that it could absorb the boy’s vitality as it slowly leaked from his body. It sheltered him and would not let his spark wink out completely, for the boy’s life force proved to be as potent as the sun, the earth, and the waterborne radiation. In fact, it was the most powerful energy source of all.

  Years later, however, when the boy’s energy was almost fully sapped, the tree began to grow hungry again. . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  Teddy Matthews rolled down the car window, and a wall of hot air blasted him as though he’d just yanked open an oven. He rolled it back up and adjusted the air conditioner to blow directly on his face.

  “It must be a zillion degrees out there,” he said.

  “Welcome to the desert,” his mother replied with the smile she wore when she was trying to make unpleasant things seem not so bad. It was the same smile she’d used when she first told him they were “relocating” to the middle of nowhere and leaving all his friends behind.

  He shifted his feet atop a moving box on the floorboards and stared out at the tan expanse of sand as his mom drove them toward their new home in Richland, Washington.

  “I thought that Washington was the Evergreen State,” Teddy said.

  “That’s the west side of the state,” his mom said. “They don’t get much rain over here in southeastern Washington. Almost all of the water comes from the Columbia River.”

  “Isn’t that where the nuclear plant dumps its waste?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she replied. “They stopped doing that years ago. The town is completely safe now.”

  She was a lab chemist and had a job lined up at the plant, so Teddy didn’t argue about the nuclear stuff. Instead he said, “Sure, completely safe, except for the scorpions.”

  “Whose venom is no worse than a bee sting,” his mother assured him.

  “What about rattlesnakes?” he tried.

  “They keep to dark holes mostly, and they’re more scared of us than we are of them.”

  “Oh, I doubt that very much,” Teddy said.

  “It’s the black widow spiders that actually get into the houses.” She winked at him. “Watch out for those.”

  Teddy shuddered.
“You know, Mom, most people stay far away from creepy, poisonous things. They don’t move to the desert to live among them.”

  “C’mon,” his mother prodded playfully. “Once we get there, you just need to find your place. Don’t worry. I’m sure there will be lots of kids for you to meet.”

  Teddy sighed—he couldn’t help but worry. He was about to become the new kid in a strange town for the first time in his life.

  They turned onto the Vernita Bridge, which crossed over the Columbia River. It was strange to see a river in the middle of the desert, especially the biggest river in the Pacific Northwest. It bullied its way through the dry landscape like a giant serpent swallowing up the sand and everything else in its path.

  Fifty miles down the river, they came to Richland.

  The highway into town took them past a dump where the heat was busily decomposing the stinky garbage, then a gated cemetery, which didn’t look very restful sitting beside the noisy road, and finally a run-down trailer park with a wooden sign the relentless sun had bleached almost white. The faded letters read DESERT OASIS! But nothing about the trailer park, or the town for that matter, looked like an oasis to Teddy.

  Richland wasn’t large. Five more minutes, and they were at their new house.

  “So this is the place the government is renting for us,” his mom declared as they stepped out of the car. “Two thousand square feet and new brown carpet. Great, huh?”

  Teddy surveyed the block. His new home was a two-story split-level with an attached garage and a huge picture window in front. It was nearly identical to the other houses up and down the street. They were all beige with two stories, and each had the same big window beside the front door. The only difference seemed to be the shade of beige and which side of the house the garage was on.

  The street was empty in the midday heat, which the radio had said was over one hundred degrees. Teddy supposed there might be other kids in the neighborhood, but there would be no school to help him meet them for another month. Until then, he was on his own.

  To the left of his house, a slightly lighter beige house boasted a bright green lawn, and, just as Teddy began to wonder how it stayed so healthy, an automatic sprinkler popped up and sprayed water across his shoes.

  “Nice,” he mumbled, scrambling backward.

  On the other side of his yard stood the only unique house on the street. The place was big, square, and looked much older. Its chimney was missing bricks, and its small windows were so dirty they’d turned brown. Rotten wood awnings hung out over them like droopy eyelids. Desert sand was piled up against the front door, making the place look neglected and lonely.

  As Teddy stared at the decrepit house, a huge shadow fell across his face. He looked up. A massive, twisted sycamore tree stood in the old house’s yard, and its leafy branches blocked out the sun, darkening both the dingy house next door and Teddy’s new home. Despite the heat of the day, Teddy felt a shiver run down his spine.

  While his mother searched for the key to their own house, Teddy snuck around the fence for a closer look at the abandoned place. Dead grass and dry weeds crinkled beneath his feet, while the tree hovering over the yard seemed in perfect health. It was as though the giant thing was sucking the life from all the plants below, and the lawn was a graveyard of the dried yellow husks of its victims.

  He crossed the yard to the porch, where the floorboards were cracked and split. The paint had almost completely peeled off the walls of the home, but it looked as though, in a happier time, it too might have been painted beige. One of the dirty windows was ajar. It would be easy to sneak inside, and Teddy had a sudden, creeping feeling that the old place wanted someone to visit.

  The porch creaked, making Teddy jump. To his surprise, he found himself standing smack in the center of the splintered old thing. He hadn’t realized he’d even mounted the steps. Now he was within arm’s reach of the doorknob.

  Teddy backed away from the old house, a little spooked that he’d been so drawn to its rickety porch. He felt for the steps behind him with his foot, but when he eased down off the porch, his shoe caught on something. As he fell, he made a grab for the rail, but his hand glanced off and dragged across a loose nail instead. In the hot sun, the rusty metal felt strangely cold slicing into his wrist.

  Teddy landed flat on his back in the tall, dead weeds beneath the sycamore. The tree’s green leaves seemed to turn away from the sun and look down at him. A large root had caught his shoe, and a few drops of blood from his arm dribbled onto the twisted wood, where they quickly soaked in.

  Teddy’s head swam—it was hot, and the sight of even a little blood had always made him woozy.

  A car horn sounded nearby, and the sudden noise brought him back to his senses. Teddy shook his head clear, jumped up, and hustled back to his own porch as a mail carrier stomped up his walk.

  “You live here?” she asked.

  Teddy nodded, and she thrust a pile of mail wrapped with a rubber band at him.

  “Here’s a week’s worth,” she said. “Been waiting for you to move in.” She nodded at the old house. “Whatcha doing hanging around that nasty place?”

  “Nothing?” Teddy replied.

  “A kid disappeared there, you know.” Without any further explanation, she marched back down the walkway and drove off.

  Nope, he thought. I did not know that.

  Teddy stuffed his hand in his pocket. It wasn’t a big cut, and he didn’t want to explain what happened to his mom. He slunk around the house to the back door to avoid her, but there she stood in the kitchen, stuffing Tupperware into cupboards.

  “Soooo? How do you like it?” she asked.

  “It’s, uhh . . . great,” Teddy lied. “Almost like a normal town.”

  “Good!” She nodded, pushing a mixing bowl into a full cabinet and slamming the door closed before it could fall back out. “I got you a Hide-a-Key to stick out in the yard so you don’t have to carry a key with you when you leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “You know, to explore the neighborhood and make some friends. I’m hoping with a new start you might come out of your shell a little.”

  “I dunno, Mom,” Teddy said. “I kinda like my shell. It’s safe in here.”

  “Out,” she said, friendly but firm. “And don’t come back until you’ve met some other kids.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Teddy pedaled his bike down the street with a bandage on his wrist and his face greased with sunscreen to ward off the desert sun’s radiation. He rode past a few cul-de-sacs lined with more houses that looked just like his, each with a pop-up sprinkler system and a green lawn. None were like the old house with the dead yard next door.

  Less than a mile from his home, he saw a sign for Leslie Groves Park. A park seemed like a nice place to explore, but when he crested a small hill he saw that the “park” was little more than a strip of ragged yellow scrub brush that began where the tidy green lawns ended.

  Beyond the scrub brush, the Columbia River cut a vast swath through the sand-and-tumbleweed terrain. It split into two huge channels around a small gravel island. Each channel was more than a football field wide, and the island itself was bare and only about three feet high. It was covered with squawking white seagulls, even though Richland was hundreds of miles from the ocean, in the middle of the desert.

  Teddy almost rode away, but then he noticed a boy standing on the near shore flinging rocks toward the gulls. The kid was chubby, about his own age, and wearing very odd bell-bottom pants.

  For a few minutes, Teddy just stood straddling his bike and watched the kid, waiting for a good opportunity to say something. Then, without thinking, he rolled forward, and his bike thumped off the end of the sidewalk into the dirt. The boy heard the noise and whirled around, startled. Teddy was now too close not to say something.

  “Hey bro.” Teddy offered.

  The boy glared at Teddy. “What do you mean, ‘bro’?”

  “Uh, I mean, hi,” Teddy clarified.
r />   “Oh. Hi.” The boy seemed to relax. “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Nothing,” Teddy replied, then he remembered the shiny layer of sunscreen. “Oh, this? It’s Suntastic eighty. It protects against the sun.”

  “You need protection to go out?”

  “Sort of,” Teddy said. He pointed across the water, hoping to change the subject. “So, uh, are you trying to hit those birds?”

  “Naw. They’re too far away, and I don’t have an arm that good,” the boy explained. “Besides, that would be mean. But I heard that if you can splash one close to the flock, they’ll all fly off at once like a big white blanket, and that would be cool to see.”

  Another awkward moment of silence made Teddy wonder if he should make up an excuse to leave. But his mom had been very clear about trying to meet some kids, so Teddy dismounted and found a large stick. He chucked it into the water.

  “That current looks strong,” he said.

  “Yup.”

  Submerged snags just below the surface held the stick up for a moment, then the current shook it loose and swept it downstream. Teddy picked up a rock and nailed the stick with a giant splash before it could get away.

  The boy gave him two thumbs up. “Ayyy! Nice one. You got an arm like Pete Rose.” He stepped forward and held out a pudgy hand, palm up. “Give me some skin.”

  “Thanks,” Teddy said, slapping his hand. “I’m Teddy.”

  “Teddy Bear!”

  “No, just Teddy,” Teddy said, not sure if the boy was somehow making fun of him. “What’s your name?”

  “Albert.” The boy smiled a big, open grin that made his eyes squinch up. “I know. It’s not a cool name either, but it’ll be Big Al as soon as I’m old enough to drive a forklift and get a union job out in the area, eh, Ted?”

  “The area?”

  “You know, the site.” Teddy still wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “The Hanford nuclear plant? Ring a bell?”

  “Oh, right,” Teddy said quickly.