That Wicked Apple: A Scary Tale of Snow White and Even More Zombies

Chapter Four

Grouchy

THE NOTE FALLS LIKE a withered leaf out of Grouchy’s stubby fingers. Heart quickening with possibility, he pulls out his dagger and pries the boards away from the door. Nails groan free of their new wooden homes like sleepy metallic worms stretching stiffly out of their holes.

Dim. It can’t be. Is this a trick of Snow’s, to lure them outside? No, that doesn’t figure. The handwriting definitely has Dim’s artistic slant.

“What’s it say?” Hays whispers behind him.

“‘It’s dim’?” Battson says.

“Dim,” Snoozy yells, joining Grouchy at the door.

“Of course it is,” Devere says. “Been raining all afternoon.”

Grouchy swings open the door at last, knocking aside the clutter of boards on the floor. Dim stares back with a wide smile and frayed eyes. He has two pickaxes strapped to his back, and a bloody pickaxe in his hands. Newly dead Horrors sprawl on the floor, their heads bashed in. Behind him, a rope dangles downward from the hole in the ceiling.

“Balls,” Grouchy shouts. He and Snoozy embrace their friend. “How the hells are you alive?” Dim smells of rain and mud and hope.

Snoozy steps back and knocks Dim’s head. “You are alive, right? Not hollow?”

Dim nods vigorously, gives a shaky smile, points at his cheeks, and expectantly lifts his hands palms-up. Even Grouchy understands the meaning. Merry?

He shakes his head. “Merry’s gone, friend. We three are the Collective. How did you survive out there? Blushful said they got you.”

Dim’s hands zip across and in front of his body, slap his shoulder, mime teeth, finger-walk, form a box, and so on. Grouchy shakes his head, lost.

Lox speaks up, “I think he said one of the Horrors bit him, but the bite was blocked by his, uh, purse?”

Dim shakes his head and motions at his shoulders.

“Backpack. The Horror bit his backpack. Then he ran and hid in a room? Or a shed?”

Dim nods with vigor, smiling at the girl.

“How the hells do you know his hand-talk?” Grouchy says.

Lox shrugs. “Uh, I paid attention.”

Pulling Grouchy out into the loft, Dim beckons everyone to leave the storage room. The mob below sounds like a giant insect with hundreds of legs scurrying beneath the floorboards. All the noises make Grouchy’s belly knot—the hissing, the buzz of the flies, the undead moans, the clamor of furniture and bones crushed under the mob’s weight, and the constant tapping of the rain.

The humans file out of the storage room, eyeing Dim closely. It’s not every day that one comes across a mute, hairless dwarf.

Hays whispers to Battson, “That dwarf’s bald. Someone must have stolen his hair treasure.”

When the Queen exits last, Dim tenses. He hurls his pickaxe at her, but Devere catches it in mid-air.

“Thank you, Huntsman,” the Queen says. “Your loyalty will be rewarded.”

“Damn your loyalty, witch.”

“We know, Dim.” Grouchy pats Dim’s belly. “She’s the hag. Also the Queen. She may be able to end the curse, so she lives. For now.” He points at the giant. “He’s Devere, the Head Huntsman who set Snow into the woods. His daughter’s Lox, Snow’s friend.” When Dim arches an eyebrow at Grouchy, he adds, “Yeah. It’s a small world after all.”

Dim points upward at the hole in the ceiling, through which rain drizzles downward. Lox shimmies up the rope first, followed by the Queen. Just as she makes it through the hole, a Horror—a teenage boy with acne scars and messy hair—clears the stairwell entrance.

Grouchy grabs a pickaxe from Dim and lops the boy’s head off. The mop of hair flops lazily as the decapitated head rolls across the room, jaw snapping and eyes rolling with the motion of the spin.

It’s getting too easy, far too easy to tear these Horrors apart—even if they are swobs. This headless boy had a name, a mother and father, and many stories that will never be told.

“Oh dear,” Margie says. “Killi, that boy has lost his head.”

“Yes, Margie.”

The two soldiers quickly shimmy up the rope, then hoist the Killingtons up one after the next. Devere and the dwarfs now stand alone on the second floor.

Across the room, glass breaks. The Horrors in the street have finally scaled the side of the building. At the stairway, a gnarled hand reaches upward through the makeshift barrier. Grouchy slashes Honey-Stick through the forearm. Bits of bone and blood splatter across the floor.

Another hand.

Grouchy tries to take in everything that’s happening, just like he did during the Planchette riots. Now it’s Snoozy who slams his pickaxe through the back of a head. An arrow shot from above pierces the eye of a blood-splattered woman. A female Horror charges through the window at Dim, who slams his pickaxe into her uncombed hair. Devere uses a wooden plank to knock the other Horrors away from the front window.

“Go on, Snoozy,” Grouchy shouts. “Get up the rope.”

“Too many patients.”

Snoozy’s right. They’re barely keeping up with the relentless onslaught. If anyone tries scaling the rope, the mob will overpower them. Grouchy roars, slamming his pickaxe into the encroaching mob. Across the room, Dim stomps his boot against the wooden floor—his mute version of a barbaric yell.

Grouchy keeps swinging at the mob—a bearded lumberjack, a snarling teenager, a big-haired woman. All of them fall, quickly replaced by a never-ending stream of Horrors.

Without warning, strong hands grip him solidly from behind and pin his arms against his sides. It’s Devere. So strong is the giant’s grip that Grouchy might as well be buried up to his neck in sand.

Devere hoists Grouchy into the air and whispers, “Sorry about what happens next, little fella.”