In the end, Casper did take Drew to the hospital, where she was treated for shock. After half an hour, the nurse told Casper, "She's fine. Just a bit upset, that's all."
That was hardly surprising. At least with Seb, they hadn't actually seen him die. But Drew had been directly in front of Zack when the doors sliced his head off. A jet of blood had sprayed onto her face.
She had been rather upset about it.
Casper greeted her in the waiting room, and walked her outside. They found a bench, and sat down. Casper waited.
Finally, Drew spoke. "Phoebe's next," was all she said.
Casper nodded. Drew evidently didn't want to think about Zack.
He was wrong.
"I've been trying to work out why Zack died," Drew continued. "After all, I was supposed to be next. Why did it skip me?"
Casper thought about it. "I saved you," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, back when the bus crashed, Death was going to kill us," Casper explained. "But you saved us. You cheated Death and spared us. So it missed us, and came back later. I think the same rules apply now. I saved you from Death, so it left you alone and moved on to Zack. I think you're safe, at least until it cycles round to you again."
Drew considered this. She nodded. "So we can cheat it."
"Only temporarily, I think. And I think someone else has to save you. Zack could have got up, but he didn't. Death has foreseen everything we do. It's up to someone else to intervene and make it skip us."
Drew looked as though she was suddenly remembering something. She sat up, and then said, "Let's go to my bedroom."
Casper was caught off guard. "Now? After what's happened?"
Drew rolled her eyes. "Do all men think with their groins, rather than their brains?"
Casper smiled. "Most of the time, yeah."
Drew grabbed him by the arm. "We need to go now. There isn't much time."
When they reached Drew's room, she did not, to Casper's disappointment, start stripping. Rather, she switched on her computer.
"What are you doing?" Casper asked, sitting on the bed.
"I've seen Zack before," she muttered.
"Yes… you went to school with him, remember?"
Drew shook her head. "I don't mean that. Seeing Zack, standing between automatic doors, with his arm raised… it was like a déjà vu."
She clicked a button.
Several files appeared onscreen.
alexa.jpg
casperandbrett.jpg
dannyandsam.jpg
jerry.jpg
leo.jpg
me.jpg
phoebe.jpg
seb.jpg
zack.jpg
zoe.jpg
"What are those?" asked Casper, seeing his name on the list.
"These are the photos I took the day of the bus crash. I want to check something." She clicked on zack.jpg. The photo of Zack suddenly filled the screen.
She gasped. "Look familiar?" she said to Casper.
Casper examined it.
Zack had been running out of the automatic doors of the shopping centre, but now he was frozen in mid-air. He was positioned between the two doors.
And he had his armed raised in front of him.
Casper looked at it for a long time. Eventually, he said quietly, "That's a coincidence. Couldn't be anything else."
"Let's find out, shall we?" Drew closed Zack's picture, and moved the cursor to hover over jerry.jpg. "Dare we?"
Casper considered it. "All right," he said. "Then we can find out that it was a coincidence."
Jerry's photo opened. They stared at it.
Jerry was holding the lightgun to his head, pretending to shoot himself.
Phoebe was also in her bedroom. She was looking through her record collection.
She had had all her favourite songs transferred onto records. She preferred them to CDs.
After a lot of indecision, she chose a record labelled BLUE OYSTER CULT.
Drew and Casper looked at each other. Drew was trembling. "Now that's one hell of a coincidence," she said.
Casper felt sick. This couldn't be happening. "Well, there's one way to find out, isn't there?"
Drew nodded. She closed Jerry's photo, and moved the cursor to seb.jpg.
Phoebe switched on her computer and logged in to her own webcam, While she waited for the page to load, she did a little dance to the sound of Don't Fear the Reaper, which was the song currently playing.
"Where's the fire?" asked Casper.
Drew examined the photo. Seb had his face pressed up again the window, which fitted, since he had been thrown out a window. But what about the fire?
Then she saw it. "There," she said, pointing. There was a sticker on the window, covering Seb's lower body. It was the sort that you can see through, so while it was pointing outwards (towards Seb), they could see that it bore a drawing of fire. The words below it were back-to-front, but they could read them. They said, "Please do not smoke in this store as there is a high fire risk. Thank you".
Phoebe checked her profile status. No one was online yet. She knew it wouldn't be long, though. She fiddled with one of the numerous clips she had out in her hair, hoping it made her attractive.
The record was still playing. "Don't fear the reaper…" sang the voice.
Then it stuck. Phoebe sighed. The problem with her records was, they often skipped and started playing the same few seconds of the song over and over. It was doing so now. As she got to her feet to fix it, the song kept repeating three words.
"Fear the reaper… fear the reaper… fear the reaper…"
"We have to warn Phoebe," Drew said. Casper agreed. Drew opened the phoebe.jpg file.
"Well, I think this one's easy to work out," said Casper.
He was right. Phoebe was standing, and a record was hanging in mid air, clearly flying towards her. Alexa's arm was just visible.
She quickly closed it and opened an Internet page.
"What are you doing?" Casper asked.
Drew pointed at the clock. "It's Phoebevision time!"
"Fear the reaper… fear the reaper…" The song was still stuck. Phoebe fiddled with it, and finally it started playing normally again. She turned to the computer.
A beep had alerted her that someone wanted to talk to her. She moved away from the record player.
She didn't notice that one of her hairclips had fallen into the machine.
She sat down. The user trying to contact her was Drew. She smiled, and clicked the button.
Drew's face appeared onscreen. To her surprise, Phoebe saw that Casper was sitting on her bed.
"Drew!" Phoebe exclaimed. "What were you and Cass up to?"
Casper winced. Phoebe was the only person in the world that called him "Cass". He didn't like it.
"We weren't doing anything. Listen Phoebe, you're in great danger!" said Drew dramatically.
Phoebe didn't hear her. The record player had just gone bang.
"Did you hear me?" demanded Drew from the screen. Phoebe wasn't paying attention. The record had suddenly started to spin faster and faster.
"Phoebe!" Drew screamed at her. "You have to get out of the house now!"
"Why?" she asked, turned back.
"You're going to die!" yelled Casper. "Run!"
"Me? Die?" Phoebe looked confused. Then her face suddenly became a mask of terror. "You mean, like Jerry? And Seb?"
"And Zack!" said Casper. "He died earlier today!"
"Oh no," said Phoebe. She stood up.
The record player exploded.
It ejected the record with extreme force.
The disc spun through the air at a very high velocity.
Phoebe turned to look at it in surprise.
The world's most lethal music hit her just below the jaw line.
Drew and Casper looked on in horror as the now-headless corpse of their friend dropped to the floor.
Then the screen went blank. Casper had switched it off.
Drew was in tears. "We couldn't save her. I failed."
Casper put his arm around her shoulders. "You did everything in your power. Don't worry; you'll manage it next time. Who's next, by the way?"
Drew avoided his eyes.
"Oh," said Casper.