We head for the social sciences building where Recycling and the Living Dead has been meeting for the last two weeks. As the day continues on and more students arrive, it’s a lot harder to get anywhere in a hurry. Everywhere we go, crowds of students start shambling in packs. As soon as we maneuver around one, a second group merges into the first.

  “Where are they even all going?” Winter asks, pointing out behind her. “That group was heading the other way but when they all merged, they changed directions.”

  “I don’t think they know,” I say, shouldering my backpack. Wrath bumps against the back of my neck, and there’s a sudden, hot breath there that feels almost like a threat. When we were little, we used to play Hunter/Gatherer, which always meant I played by myself while Wrath hunted and then pretended to kill me. Given that he’s always been taller and stronger than me, his attempts at ‘killing’ were always a little too realistic for my tastes.

  “Did the Dean basically call him an idiot?” Nico asks, once we reach the outskirts of the Social Sciences area.

  “A putz, I think. Everyone knows that already. He can’t get his dissertation topic approved by the department so he takes it out on the rest of us. That’s why he’s been a TA for as long as he has, or at least if you believe the rumors.”

  Nico nods at me. “And you’ve been the target of his rage lately.”

  I shake my head. “Not just lately. It’s been the last few semesters. I didn’t even know who he was before he started in on me. I think he’s been signing up for classes that he knows I’m enrolled in.”

  “You think he’s been trying to make you drop out or something?”

  I shrug, but the more the thought sits with me, the more I see a certain amount of truth to it. “Probably. Maybe. I don’t think he even knows what he wants from me.”

  “Exactly what you’d expect from a putz.”

  We head inside and the crowds of zombies are just as bad. Two of the staircases we pass are completely blocked by competing groups of students going up and coming down, each stopping the other from advancing. We head in further and the elevators, too, are a non-starter as the throngs of students are pressed so tightly against each other that you can’t get close enough to even hit the button. If we tried to actually get in one, we might find ourselves crushed to death by other students surging inside.

  The further we head into the building, Winter in the lead, and her heels making a loud clomping sound that’s almost like a rallying cry, the lighter the crowds get. Nico calls out directions and eventually navigates us towards a stairwell behind a closed door-with no zombies in sight. We open the door and head in, and climb up to the third floor.

  The crowds on the third floor are much lighter, and we don’t run into nearly as many roadblocks as we head for Freddie’s classroom. It almost feels like there should be more of a challenge to get there, but again, there hasn’t been much of a master plan associated with whatever Freddie has been doing. It’s mostly the workings of someone fumbling with a power he doesn’t understand.

  The door to our room is open, but unlike other hallways, the zombies don’t seem to be intrigued by the option of a new place to explore. If anything, they seem to be shying away from it. When some of them turn down the hallway, they see the open door and then begin to back away.

  “Looks like he’s not doing office hours right now,” Winter quips.

  “I like her,” Wrath whispers. “For a mortal.”

  I roll my eyes and focus my attention on the open doorway. There’s no indication that Freddie is inside, but given the way that the rest of the hallway is empty, unlike the rest of the building, it’s a pretty good sign.

  There’s a clock hanging halfway down the hall, but when I check it against my watch, it’s stopped at 6:47. It’s unclear whether the clock stopped this morning or maybe last night, but since they’re all electronic it shouldn’t be possible to just randomly stop it.

  As we approach closer, there’s a sound of muttering from within the room. A continuous recitation, over and over again, with inflections being very carefully made. I know this type of sound, unfortunately too well.

  “He’s trying to perform some kind of ritual,” I tell the others.

  “How do you know?” That’s Nico, already on guard. Winter just nods serenely like she trusts what I’m telling her.

  “Ritual magic is a lot like annoying someone into paying attention to you. You have to repeat the same words over and over again, and if you pronounce them wrong, the thing you’re trying to summon won’t listen.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Wrath mutters something under his breath that I can’t catch, but I also force myself not to pay attention.

  “It’s an elaborate process,” I continue. “Some entities make you go on and on for days before they’ll even consider responding. Even then, they might not do what you’re asking them for. I bet that’s what happened with Freddie. He used The Lost Star to get something specific and the thing that responded decided to have some fun with him. And maybe with us.”

  “So you really think he was targeting us?”

  “He was targeting you,” Wrath corrects.

  “He was targeting me,” I agree. “Probably because of this weird idea that I’m out to steal his spot. It’s not like there are any majors here that can only have one student. He’s probably just mentally unwell and I’m the unfortunate target.” That was certainly better than the alternative, at least.

  The sonorous chanting reaches… not a climax, but some kind of point of frustration. Freddie screeches out the final syllables, and then there’s quiet in the aftermath.

  I certainly know how to take advantage of a moment when it’s presented to me, so I saunter in through the classroom door.

  Freddie looks rough. Panting, exhausted, maybe even desiccated, he’s set up some kind of altar on the teacher’s desk at the front of the room and stares at me with wide, nearly vacant eyes. The words ‘strung out’ come first to mind.

  “What…” but he can’t even manage the rest of the question. His eyes bulge out of his head, metaphorically at least, and he looks so drained that there’s barely any energy left to speak.

  I take the opportunity to look over his altar. “I’m something of a prodigy myself,” I offer, walking across the room and inspecting the altar’s contents. Candles, of course. A chalk outline of a snake eating its own tail, classic. Spattering of blood droplets, still fresh. Incense burning away. I wrinkle my nose. “Patchouli? Are you a hippie?”

  There’s no sign of the book that he allegedly stole, but there are advanced concepts certainly in place. On the board behind him, Freddie has drawn a series of interlocking symbols that seem to almost bend the eye. Three-dimensional in a way they shouldn’t be, for being drawn on a board with a dry erase marker, they twist and curve and bend in real space. Symbols of the creatures that Freddie has been reaching out to. They’re like cell phone numbers, targeting the right phone somewhere in the Broken Hells.

  “The angle here is a little off,” I say, wiping away part of a dry erase line and fix the angle to meet at more of a curve. I wait a moment and step back. The symbol snaps into place before wavering into multiple dimensions.

  “Theo,” Wrath says, severe, “don’t play around. This is serious.”

  “I’m not playing. I’m helping. And I’m sure Freddie is so thrilled to be getting help from an underclassman. And not just any underclassman at that.”

  In fact, Freddie’s face is beginning to turn purple, though he still doesn’t have the energy to retaliate. That’s the downside to having a temper tantrum in the middle of your dark arts. The ritual saps more energy from you than you realize, and then when you have a fit, you grab what’s remaining and go too far. Bet he’s going to sulk about it later.

  If there is a later.

  “So tell me when I get something wrong. You haven’t been able to get a topic approved through your dissertation committee. You’ve been reading about zombies, and that sparked something in you. Your latest idea got rejected again. Then you heard about the special collections. If they wouldn’t see the importance of a zombie outbreak, maybe you’d show them one.”

  Freddie finally begins to catch his breath, and instead of nodding or showing that I’m in any way on the right path, he glares at me even harder than before.

  “I… don’t… need… your… h-he-HELP…” he snarls, but the effort at the end leaves him shaking.

  “You need more than my help,” I respond blandly. “A mediocre ritual is no one’s friend.”

  Wrath just sighs heavily from behind me.

  “What was that?” Freddie demands, spinning around.

  Wrath appears nearby and makes a face. Most people can’t see or hear him, but when people get a bit too close to the supernatural, sometimes they can cross over accidentally. He waves a clawed hand in front of Freddie’s face to no reaction. So at least the TA can’t see him. Smaller victories.

  I want to smile but as soon as I do that, Freddie’s going to assume it’s about him. So I resist the urge.

  It’s hard to say exactly which entity that Freddie is contacting, but there are certainly one or two dark beings that love a good zombie motif, so my assumption is one of them. Creepy guys, certainly, and not ones that I would want invited to a house party. Normal people don’t hang out with someone obsessed with festering flesh, sickly sweet rotting scents, necro-terrorism, or honestly just plain stupidity. Those guys are never at the top of the invite list.

  And yet, there’s always someone reaching out to them asking for a hand. Maybe it’s because they’re easy to please. Just shower them with a little attention and they’ll drop a zombie apocalypse on you as a treat.

  “What I don’t understand is what changed. That first night, you killed someone. But since then, no one’s died. What gives?”

  “That wasn’t the point,” Freddie growls.

  It wasn’t? “Then what was the point? You summoned a bunch of zombies.”

  “I was trying to prove that they’re ecologically evolved workers,” Freddie pants, hand clasped on the desk/altar keeping him upright. He looks like he wants to say more, but his strength is still fleeting.

  So Freddie didn’t want people to die. That might explain why he was so frantic when we came to class and… why Sev was still walking around? He brought Sev back as a zombie, but somehow stopped the rest of the zombies from killing people. It stopped being zombie rabies and became… maybe airborne? Zombie swine flu?

  “And you thought the dissertation committee was just going to see a zombie outbreak and think ‘this is a productive workforce?’” I can’t help the skeptical tone that comes out. And maybe the faintest bit of judgement.

  Freddie’s face is pale, but my question sends a surge of color into his cheeks. “You…!” His mouth opens and closes, and he tries to summon up what are probably some very inventive curses, but it’s just a stammered mess of sounds.

  Okay, maybe that wasn’t a faint bit of judgement after all.

  That’s when the ceiling splits open and a dark, necromantic sky stares down at all of us.