Chapter 10

chapter ten No! QUINT His face is pale and there are dark circles beneath his eyes. "It's been fun, friend," he says. He coughs twice. "Tell the world—tell the world our story..." There's an aching in the back of my throat. My stomach rolls as I look down at the injury, expecting

to see something bloody and awful: a razor-sharp quill slicing through my best friend. But I see none of that. Tears—real tears!—well up behind my eyeballs. I sigh. "I know you want to do a dramatic Hollywood good-bye. But dude, you're one hundred percent fine! Your bathrobe is just pinned to the headstone." "Wait, for real, I'm OK?" "Yes!" I say, grabbing hold of the needle. I start to tug but immediately yank my hand away. It's razor sharp.

The ground shakes as the Hairy Eyeball Monster hurtles down the hill. "Quint, quick, out of the bathrobe!" I say. "I'll be naked!" he exclaims. "You'll have your boxers!" "But I'll be chilly!" he cries. The roar of the barreling monster grows closer. "Chilly or dead, Quint," I bark. "Your choice!" Quint mutters something. He tries to get one arm out of the robe, but he ends up sort of looping it around himself. In seconds, he's completely upside down, stuck even more than before, and he's managed to turn his goofy bathrobe into what appears to be a makeshift straitjacket.

This could be going better. Every few moments a KRASH rings out as another headstone bursts and the Hairy Eyeball closes in. "Quint!" I yell, finally just grabbing hold of him and tugging. "Are you trying to get us killed?" He is so tangled in the bathrobe that the whole thing just ends up getting sliced to pieces as I yank him to his feet. Half-naked, he sprints down the hill and I follow. I crane my neck. The eyeball begins to tremble and shake—and I realize, with supreme terror, that

we're about to wind up on the wrong end of a barrage of ten thousand needles. "Quint! Cover! Now!" We slip behind the two nearest headstones. And just in time— Flip, flip flip NEEDLE ATTACK! Needles pepper our little tombstone defenses. The cement cracks and breaks and crumbles. I feel like I'm in some video game with the world's most

poorly designed cover system. Like, not Uncharted. Something cruddy. "What do we do?" Quint hollers. "Um, off the top of my head? Maybe, y'know, LEAVE! AS SOON AS IT STOPS SHOOTING!" "But the zombie parade!" Quint cries. "I must know more!" "Quint, I'm not dying in a cemetery! It's too fitting! Too perfect!" "Fine," Quint says. "But if it is a pied-piper thing, The Shrieking will occur again. And next time, we will track down the source." "Sure, fine, deal!" I shout. "Assuming we get out of here alive!" Finally, the barrage of needles stops. I peek around the side. My tombstone cover is cracked and the stone is filled with needles. The Hairy Eyeball Monster is bald now. Its needles have all been launched. It reminds me of one of those creepy, hairless cats—but instead of skin, it's made of, like, eyeball covering. It's like... the Hairless Eyeball Monster.